


Blue Divide

by ExecutiveShrimp



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Crime Scenes, Crimes & Criminals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Violence, Whodunnit? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 16:37:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 53,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5424245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExecutiveShrimp/pseuds/ExecutiveShrimp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Part 1: Milliardo Peacecraft's POV</p><p>Part 2 & 3: Duo Maxwell's POV</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1: Milliardo Peacecraft's POV
> 
> Part 2 & 3: Duo Maxwell's POV

**Blue Divide**

_**Part 1** _

The jarring, shrill cry of his desk phone cut through the silence in his office like a switchblade through flesh; sharply and violently.

He folded away one corner of the case file to glare at the ringing telephone, as if frightening it into submission had ever worked. No matter how incessantly he devoted his time and effort to slimming down the stack of files that appeared on his desk at the start of every day, workday or not, there would always be new cases demanding his attention. Co-workers, superiors and authority figures alike remained under the impression that, as the leader of the investigative team with one of the highest closing-rates in the state, he could solve their problems and everyone else's problems all in a day's work. And the higher up the ladder – social, political, or corporate – the more insistent they were that their case required a priority status.

He had a feeling that if he answered that phone he would be asked to let the stack of files on his desk grow fat and towering in favor of a new, 'pressing matter'. Which meant he and his team would likely be working the weekend after all, but he had no choice. Still though, there was no harm in making whoever was calling sweat a little. He took his time sitting up and reaching to take the phone off the hook.

"Senior agent Peacecraft." The sound of his coarse voice reminded him to take another sip of soothing tea. He couldn't afford to get sick.

"Good morning, big brother," Said the caller with practiced elegance.

He threw his gaze up at the paneled ceiling. "If you're calling me on my work-phone, you should address me as 'agent Peacecraft'."

"But you are much more likely to be cooperative if I'm less formal and more familial."

Milliardo tapped his fingers on the scratched surface of his desk. "You want something from me, then."

"Very astute." There was no point in denying it. She only called whenever she needed a favor.

"In that case, you should know better than to call," He shot back. "Because it's easy to hang up on you." He continued with the obvious lie: "I have to go, the chief is waving me over. Goodbye, Relena." He disconnected the line and opened up the case-file again, knowing that if she had called on official business, she would call back.

"It's a good thing I do know better."

He took a deep breath and released it in a sigh as he heard her crisp, controlled voice, noting the undertones of smugness. Milliardo glanced up at the doorway of his office and there she stood, Relena Peacecraft, in one of her fitted suits; charcoal grey, and a baby pink, silk blouse with bow-detail. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, one manicured hand holding her cellphone, and her posture was tilted at the hips.

"Agent Peacecraft," She said purposefully and stepped inside, tucking her phone away in her purse.

An official visit, he concluded. He nodded and invited her to take a seat across from him, acknowledging: "State Attorney Peacecraft." He took a moment to tidy up his desk and straighten his tie, under her watchful, bemused gaze. It was all fun and games to hang up on her, as a brother was allowed to hang up on his sister, but the dynamic changed whenever she assumed her official position as State Attorney General and he had to represent himself properly as a senior agent of the state police force.

Relena probably mistook his formality as being intimidated by her success, not realizing honor and duty were the values he treasured, not ambition or achievement. This sentiment marked him as the black sheep in a family of politicians and legal officials; mayors, senators, judges, lawyers, a Secretary of State and, as of recent, a State Attorney General. Elected two years ago as the youngest SAG in history. A function that served as a stepping stone to greater things – everything in Relena's life was ultimately about attainting 'something greater', which was why she was always 'daddy's favorite'. Relena was driven to perform well and to please 'the common folk' in her pursuit of higher goals, which actually translated to her being an excellent State Attorney General, however calculating, self-involved and heartless.

He knew what was coming. It wouldn't be the first time for her to call on him to make her look good. He sat back and inquired professionally: "How can I help you, misses Peacecraft?"

She smirked at him. "You are so cute, brother."

"Relena, please."

"Fine." She heaved a sigh, bored by his propriety. She reached into her purse and produced a slim case file. She placed it on his desk and pushed it towards him, summarizing: "It was called in at four thirty this morning as an 11-44. A straightforward incident, at first glance."

11-44: Deceased person, coroner required. He flipped open the folder and started scanning the text. There wasn't much information yet, to be expected for a fresh case.

"White male, approximately forty years old, was found dead at a motel just off the 76 highway, right outside of Morgantown," She continued. "It appeared to be an accident at first. Maid found him in the bathroom. Severe trauma to the face and blood on the sink, suggesting an unfortunate slip. However, the detective on sight reported evidence of foul play and the initial investigation suggests a homicide."

"Look… Misses Peacecraft, local LEO's can handle a case like this. I don't see any reason for the state police to get involved."

She interrupted: "Sunburst French Creek motel."

Milliardo paused.

"Does that ring a bell?"

He nodded. "It's a known gay meeting-place. A pretty disreputable motel."

"If 'disreputable' is your euphemism of choice for an establishment where three other, separate violent crimes have occurred over the past six years, two of which lethal - all three unsolved -, then yes, pretty disreputable."

"It's still a case for the local police force," He insisted.

"Oh, yes, because they have performed their duties marvelously."

Milliardo shrugged his shoulder at her sarcasm. "I don't understand why you have adopted this as a cause all of a sudden."

"The LGBT-community has been criticizing the police force, the entire department of justice and all involved political heads. They are accusing all parties of not taking crimes against gays seriously and letting them go unsolved; the perpetrators unpunished, the victims unavenged. It is causing a public outrage that has the media salivating. You know how much they would love to get another lingering shot of those signs that say 'Your senator doesn't care about you if you're gay', 'Your police officer won't protect you if you're gay'. That's exactly what will happen when the story breaks at the morning news," She glanced down at her silver, diamond encrusted watch, "forty-five minutes from now."

He shook his head. "It sounds like a political mine-field. Why even get involved?"

Relena adjusted in her seat and regarded him with intense, blue eyes. "When reporters come to my office for a soundbite, I want to assure them that the DOJ takes crimes against the LGBT-community very seriously and that we put the best team on the case."

He eyed the mostly uninformative case file. "Normally, this is the part where I remind you that strong-arming a local police department out of a case doesn't really help an investigation. It creates animosity, a dick-measuring contest. Inter-departmental communication is non-existent and important information slips through the cracks…" He looked up at her with a knowing sparkle. "But I'm guessing local LEO's had no trouble signing the case over."

She bared her pearly whites in a grin. "No strong-arming required. Didn't even have to flex. They were eager to accept the help of the best investigative team of the state police."

He made a dismissive gesture. "Don't attempt to stroke my ego. They were happy to dump the responsibility on someone else, that's it. They know there is going to be media attention and they know the kind of shit-storm that will be unleashed if another gay-case goes unsolved."

"It won't go unsolved," She supplied confidently. "Not with senior agent Peacecraft and his team on the case."

He ignored her ill-veiled mockery as she dramatically referred to them as if they were some kind of league of superheroes. "Relena," He tried, "I'm seriously advising you to take this back to Morgantown PD. The team-" He scrubbed his face and then decided to inform her: "The team is not at full strength right now. Maxwell got back from his mandatory leave only last week. And there are… tensions." He knew it was unprofessional to say this to the State Attorney General, which was why he purposefully switched back to calling her by her first name, to let her know he was not divulging that information in an official capacity. He would never put his colleagues in a compromising position, he has spared them scrutiny and even serious repercussions before, but he also had to protect his sister. Even if she was a cold politician.

"It'll be fine, big brother. I have faith in you and in your team."

Although Milliardo appreciated the sincere vote of confidence, he knew she was putting her genuine feelings of trust to use to manipulate him. But while he could deny her as his sister, if she took the request to the chief, the case would be handed to Milliardo's team anyway and getting a scolding from the boss on top of the new assignment wouldn't benefit anybody. "Alright," He consented with appropriate reluctance and dread.

Ever since his dear sister took office as the Sate Attorney General of Pennsylvania, the closing rate of his team – the percentage of solved versus unsolved cases – had taken a hit. They were still lauded as the best investigative team of the state police force, but she had been dumping some difficult cases on his desk and not all of them turned out as success-stories.

"Thank you, agent Peacecraft." She got up from her seat and straightened her skirt. "I trust that you will find whoever is responsible so he can be brought to justice."

"Don't worry, Relena. I'll try my best to make you look good."

"When there is any progress, contact my communications liason, Dorothy Catalonia. You remember her, right?"

"Fondly." The way a seal remembers a great white shark. The woman with dead eyes had a way of mincing facts of a police investigation to sell it to the media as a nice little package that they were happy to gobble up. She didn't shy away from throwing officers under the bus in order to protect the reputation of her employer. He had to stand up for his fellow police officers more than once to protect them from the calculating way in which she searched the water for bait. She was an excellent problem-solver, but always at the expense of others. Of course, Relena didn't care about that.

"Keep us in the loop. We need to get a handle on this thing." She concluded with a courteous nod and then strutted out of his office with an entitled sense of confidence that had made her look taller than everyone by several inches, since she was just a little girl.

Milliardo counted the clicks of her heels on the poured resin floor. When he heard the elevator door close, he knew the coast was clear. He hoisted himself out of his seat, thought to take a big drink of tea and then headed out with the case file tucked under his arm. He walked down the hall and rounded the corner, ending up at the administrative office.

Seated behind the single desk in the room crowded with filing cabinets and towering stacks of folders, was a young woman with short, black hair, well-spirited as ever.

"Good morning, agent Peacecraft."

"Hilde, good morning," He breathed, he reached for the post-its available on the corner of her desk and used the pen from his own pocket to write down the name and the address of the motel. "Can you track down my team and tell them to meet me at this address? I know it's early, but-"

Hilde smirked. "I know. I saw your sister."

He chuckled sheepishly.

"I can call agent Chang and agent Barton for you, but Duo is already here."

Milliardo frowned at her and then at his watch. "It's five thirty." Agents were expected to be present at the office at seven thirty, Duo had the habit of never showing up before eight. The man knew just how much he could stretch the rules before he would get into actual trouble.

"I was behind him in line downstairs at the security check. That was half an hour ago."

"I guess there's a first for everything," He mumbled but he didn't trust the situation. Something was off. "Anyway, I'll take Duo. You call Chang and Barton, please?" He tapped the post-it with the address.

"No problem."

He waved her goodbye and backed out of her cramped office. Not bothering to wait for the elevator he took the stairs down to the bullpen where his team members had their desks. As senior agent he was forced to work in his office upstairs, exactly because important people like the SAG could show up and these were not the kind of people you welcomed into the noisy and crowded bullpen. That was considered inappropriate.

For a moment he was certain Hilde had been mistaken. But then again, Duo was a hard guy to miss and there was no one like him in the force. Not just his physical appearance with his tall stature and long hair that was always neatly braided, the distinctive rope trailing down the length of his spine – Milliardo himself had started braiding his own long, platinum blond hair when Duo made a case for the advantages of a braid versus a pony tail. Duo was also quite the character; 'boisterous' was the word they had settled on. Everyone in the office, from the janitor to the chief, knew Duo and liked him and everyone was on first-name basis with him. The agent had been sorely missed the past three months, since he got shot in the leg during the raid of a gang-house and had been taken off active duty and forced to take leave to deal with the physical and psychological ramifications of getting wounded on the job.

It seemed the American had bounced back gracefully, yet it caused Milliardo worry that he hadn't been back for more than a week and he was already behaving out of the ordinary. That was one of the signs that he, as team leader, had been trained to take note of. Milliardo had protected him so far and kept his secret safe, he wasn't eager for internal affairs to get involved. As far as Milliardo was concerned, problems with a team member were like a family affair; it's nobody's business but theirs.

Several officers greeted him as he walked into the bullpen and maneuvered around the jungle of desks and cabinets. He spotted Duo at his desk by the window, a far-away look in his eyes, ignoring everything around him. That definitely wasn't normal. Duo was normally like a Golden Retriever, excitedly responding to all activity, eager to be amidst everything.

Milliardo knocked on the desk like he would knock on a door and he offered the agent a smile when he looked up at him, dazed.

Duo was quick to change his demeanor. A silly grin spread across his lips. "Zechs! I should have known you would be at the office at fuck'o'clock."

"Don't call me Zechs," He corrected routinely. "We've picked up a case." He studied his friend's face, noticing the uncharacteristic stubble on his jaw and the faint bruise underneath the dark hairs.

"Cool." He jumped up from his seat and grabbed his jacket with was draped over the backrest. "Let's go."

"Are you really up for this?"

Duo stopped with one arm halfway into the sleeve of his jacket. "Of course…" He completed putting on the piece of clothing in slow-motion, eying his boss warily. "You promised you would get off my back when I got back on duty."

Milliardo leaned in close. "And you promised you would tell me if something was up."

He stared at the blond. "And I'm keeping that promise. There's nothing to tell."

"So there's no story behind that bruise?" He could feel Duo stare at him, "Or the fact that you come in at five in the morning and you're trying to hide that bruise with that hideous stubble?"

Duo groaned. "I'm not trying to hide anything! I had a stumble in the bathroom and forgot to shave. As you pointed out yourself, I'm not used to getting in at such an early hour."

"Alright." Milliardo almost felt bad for questioning Duo, but his past behavior had caused some trust issues between them and the agent really couldn't blame him for needing to be sure.

"Zechs, seriously. I'm cool."

"Fine… Don't call me Zechs." He gestured for him to follow him and they both headed down to the parking garage. Milliardo climbed into the driver's seat of the dark SUV and Duo sat down next to him. With effortless precision he steered the large vehicle out of the underground parking garage and onto the quiet streets.

No words were exchanged between them and Milliardo didn't like it. Duo shouldn't like it either, but the other man seemed perfectly content looking out the passenger side window, avoiding eye-contact as they headed onto the 76 highway. If everything was normal the younger agent would be quipping inappropriate jokes or at least inquiring about the case.

He gripped the steering wheel tightly, wringing the leather cover underneath his fingers. "Did you go to the meeting last night?"

Duo turned his head to glare at him. "Yes, I went to the meeting, mom. As I go to all my meetings."

"Dial down the snarky attitude. I stuck my neck out for you."

"Don't worry. Your neck is fine." He studied the surroundings. "Where are we headed, Philly?"

Milliardo ignored his question and pressed on: "I'm not trying to get on your case or give you grief. I'm just looking out for you. It's my responsibility."

"It's not."

"It is, Duo," He barked. "You became my responsibility when I made the call not to report your drinking to IA."

"I'm alright, Mill," He assured earnestly. "You made the right call. I'm grateful for what you did, I won't let you down. I'm better now."

Milliardo nodded. He didn't want to have to question Duo's integrity. He considered the man a friend but above all he considered him a good agent; someone he had readily entrusted with his life since they first started working together years ago on the undercover squad. And when Milliardo had been given the opportunity to assemble his own homicide-investigation team for the bureau, he had been adamant about recruiting Duo, he was smart as a whip and a crack shot. But he knew that the kind of troubles Duo had been dealing with should not be taken lightly; the kind of troubles that meant he wasn't always himself, he wasn't always that friend, he wasn't always that good agent.

His actions had never gotten anyone in serious trouble, nor had it ever caused anybody harm, which was how Milliardo justified protecting him from the scrutiny of Internal Affairs. He had stuck his neck out for more officers in the past and it had always worked out for the better and his colleagues respected him for it, but sometimes Milliardo wondered if he had ever gone too far in protecting a fellow cop. He had always trusted he would know the line when he hit it, but ever since he covered for Duo's drinking problem three months ago, he worried if he might have already unknowingly crossed that line between right and wrong.

Duo's injury during the shootout became a blessing in disguise. He used the injury as an excuse to put the agent on mandatory leave, supposedly for physical therapy. In reality, the GSW was nothing but a flesh wound, he was back on his feet in a week or so. Duo needed the time off so Milliardo could sign him into a rehab facility. He had been in inpatient care the first two months, the third month he was allowed to go home on the condition of coming back for his daily group- and private sessions. To keep up appearances Milliardo had given him a ride to the office on occasion, where Duo would greet everyone with a fake limp and a fake smile.

At the end of the third month Duo begged him to allow him to go back on active duty and Milliardo, who had been monitoring his recovery closely, had agreed. If they had gone through the proper channels, that wouldn't have been his call and maybe it shouldn't have been his call. He was hardly an expert. But Duo was one of the best, the whole ordeal could have cost him his career and that wouldn't have been fair. He was one of the good guys. The job was about taking down the bad guys, not dragging good officers through the mud because they were having a hard time.

Duo snapped his fingers. "Mill."

Milliardo shook his head and glanced at him sideways.

"I'm okay," The dark-haired agent repeated.

"I trust you," He said poignantly.

"Good. Anything I should know before we get to the crime scene?"

"Too late," Milliardo said as he spotted the motel sign at the side of the road. "We're already here." He took the exit and swiftly drove the SUV into the small parking lot of the Sunburst French Creek motel.

"This is the place?" Duo visibly blanched.

"Yeah. You remember those other cases, don't you?" He parked the car and climbed out, taking the file with him under his arm.

Duo emerged from the vehicle slowly, staring at the yellow police tape that lined the front of the motel. "Uhh… yeah… Sure. Two violent beatings; suspected gay bashings, three victims ended up dead and two years ago there was that robbery, guest got shot in the abdomen, barely pulled through. No arrests were ever made. The media was all over those."

"And they will have a field-day with this one as well. If we don't solve it, it will be the fourth unsolved crime at this motel and we'll be the 'homophobic' assholes who didn't care enough to catch the killer."

They headed for the police tape and flashed a sergeant their badges.

"Where's detective Tsubarov? We're here to take over the case," Milliardo asked the sergeant.

The man nodded at an older gentlemen in an ill-fitting brown suit standing off to the side, talking with someone who appeared to be a motel employee. The sergeant held up the line of tape for them and they stepped onto the crime scene.

Detective Tsubarov spotted them and walked over. "You're the state boys, huh?"

"Pennsylvania state police, bureau of criminal investigation," Milliardo said habitually.

"Well, knock yourself out with this one. Sergeant Mueller will get you up to speed. I'm getting the Hell out of this snake-pit."

Sergeant Mueller emerged from motel room 102 at the end of the walkway and shook their hands for a formal greeting. "Follow me, come meet our John Doe." He headed back in the direction of the room and Milliardo and Duo trailed him.

"Motel front desk doesn't have an ID on him?"

"Room is paid for in cash, for an extended stay. The room has been rented by the same guy for the past couple of weeks."

"How was the body found?"

"Door was wide open. Maid wandered in when she came in for her early shift."

As they stepped into the motel room, Mueller explained off-handedly: "Coroner declared it foul-play. Chunks of hair had been ripped out of the vic's head, suggesting someone grabbed him by his hair and slammed his face into the bathroom sink." He paused at the doorway leading into the bathroom and gestured for them to take a look.

Duo idled by the front door but Milliardo stepped into the small bathroom and gazed upon the large body of the deceased male. He was on his stomach on the tiled floor, face down, a significant pool of blood around his head. He didn't need to look at his face, the crime-scene photo's included in the file accurately portrayed the gruesome trauma to his face; smashed-in nose and cheekbones, his complexion white and purple. The impact hadn't cracked the skull but preliminary cause of death was CHI: Closed Head Injury. The brain had swollen but there was no release for the pressure. The tell-tale smear of blood on the edge of the stone sink completed the story.

Duo appeared beside him for a quick look at the John Doe and then he went back to scouring the room for clues.

"Too bad," Sergeant Mueller concluded. "We had a bet going. I was sure it was just a sad."

Milliardo turned to look at him and questioned: "Aren't all deaths sad, sergeant Mueller?"

The officer chuckled. "No, not 'sad'. A SAD. S-A-D."

He stepped out of the bathroom and shot a look at Duo. "What's that? S-A-D?"

Before Mueller could answer, Duo supplied: "Slip-and-die."

"Exactly." Mueller nodded. "It looked like an accident."

Milliardo scrutinized the room, noticing the crooked painting, the smashed table lamp, the broken mirror and the unhinged closet door. "You bet it was just an accident when the room shows clear signs of a struggle?"

"Well, I interviewed the guest who stayed in the room next door and he said that whoever was in this room this night got pretty rough. Sexually. If you know what I mean."

"Yes, sergeant Mueller, thank you," Milliardo snapped.

"I thought their tumble in the sac could have caused the damage. That's a judgement error that is going to cost me forty bucks."

Milliardo glared at the man. "Is it normal for the Morgantown police department to use the death of a human being to play games and earn some pocket money?"

Mueller froze.

"Show some respect."

"Yes… yes, sir."

"Anything else to report?"

"No sir, we got the call that state police would be taking over. We've identified the witnesses but figured you would want to talk to them for yourselves."

"Yes, go outside, ask the witnesses to stay, we will be with them shortly. And then never step foot on my crime scene again," Milliardo warned darkly. "Or I'll personally make sure you will be directing traffic for the rest of your career."

Mueller nodded and stepped around Duo to get out of the room.

"Was it really necessary to make him nearly piss his pants?" Duo challenged.

"This is a sensitive case, the public is already accusing police officers of discriminating against gays and then a guy like that is making bets on a dead guy. If word got out, we would all be hung out to dry by our ball-sacs." He fished latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on so he could properly search the room. Their forensics team arrived shortly after and Duo asked them to give them a moment before they would all come in an crowd the room.

The closet and the drawers of the nightstand were empty. There was a small overnight bag on the desk and Milliardo rummaged through the contents but he found nothing to identify the John Doe on the bathroom floor. The bag only contained a change of clothes, a toothbrush and toothpaste and a strip of condoms. He moved to check the trash bin by the bathroom door. "Used condom," He noted. "Someone was definitely in this room with him."

"Yeah, because John Doe is not the guest who rented this room."

Milliardo looked up at him with questioned eyes.

Demonstratively Duo grabbed the shirt out of the overnight bag and held it up. "I don't think this will fit our big fella in the bathroom."

Milliardo came closer and expected the label in the hem. Sure enough the shirt was a small size and the victim was anything but small. "So the guest has a visitor, our John Doe, has sex with him and then… what? A lover's quarrel turned ugly? He kills him and flees?"

"But leaves his stuff and a dead body in the bathroom of his own room?" Duo challenged.

"Doesn't make sense…" Milliardo agreed. "But there's no phone, so he must've taken that with him at least. If we can get an ID we might be able to track the cellphone number." He looked out the door and spotted Barton and Chang getting out of their car and heading over. "You stay here," He instructed Duo, "Oversee the forensics team. Make sure everything gets done by the book and don't let any of those local LEO's onto my crime scene. We can't afford any fuck-ups on this one. Chang, Barton and I will handle the witnesses."

"Sure thing." Duo gestured for the forensics crew to come inside and start their work and coordinated with the coroner to get the body out of there and back to the autopsy lab.

"You don't mind baby-sitting the techs?" Mill had expected some measure of objection from the other agent.

"No." He smirked at one of the forensic guys who looked up indignantly at the idea of needing to be baby-sat. "Ask the manager if he ever saw the car our missing guy drives."

"Yeah, but I doubt the manager of a place of a place like this pays attention to license-plates."

"Make and model might be enough."

"Maybe." Trusting Duo to be able to manage the crew, Milliardo stepped out and greeted his other team members.

Trowa Barton was nursing a big cup of coffee to-go, looking tired, his suit – put on in haste – was disheveled. WuFei Chang was proper, composed and alert as always, ready to get to work.

"We have a homicide and a suspect on the run. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how important it is that we close this case, given the history of this motel. The sooner the better."

The two of them nodded, they were familiar with the previous, unsolved crimes that had taken place at the shady motel.

"We have a lot of people to go through. Most of them probably saw nothing, but we have to be thorough. I'll start with the motel manager and then the guest in 101, local LEO mentioned the guy heard something last night. Chang, you take the maid who found the body. Barton," He handed him the photo of the victim from the case file. "It's a long shot but see if anybody recognizes the guy."

Barton made a face. "His own mother could have a hard time identifying him…"

"I know, but we have to try. Be sure to give a description of his clothing; blue jeans, black boots, a black shirt and a brown, leather bomber jacket."

They split up to get to work. Milliardo headed over to the front desk at the other end of the motel where the manager had been instructed to wait for questioning.

The manager was a short, balding man who smelled like he hadn't taken a shower a couple of days. His shirt was stained with ketchup and mustard, his teeth were stained with tobacco.

"Hello, I'm agent Peacecraft, I'm heading the investigation. You are the manager, correct?"

"Yes," The man reached out to shake hands with him, in spite of his appearance he was perfectly polite. "Pete Grubinger."

"Room 102 has been rented out for an extended stay?"

"Hmhm. Couple of months now."

"Could you check your files to see since when exactly?"

He shuffled to behind his desk and started leafing back through a thick book, taking his time to scan each page. Milliardo tapped the tip of his pen against his notebook impatiently. Finally, the man found the date when the room was first reserved for the extended stay. "The first of April, no joke."

Milliardo scribbled down the date. "That's over two months ago. The guest has been staying in the room all that time?"

"No, he comes about once or twice a week for one night. Sometimes three times a week, but never consecutive nights."

"And you never asked for a name?"

"As long as they pay and don't cause any trouble, I'm not going to pester anyone for a name. People come here for the anonymity."

"Right…" He chewed on the inside of his cheek. He was reminded that the kind of anonymity these guests preferred would probably hinder the investigation. Witnesses tended to be not so cooperative when they had something to hide themselves. "Could you give a description of the guest?"

"Short," He started and then paused to think. "Dark hair, brown I think. But maybe black because he looked a little Oriental if I recall… although…" He frowned at himself. "I'm pretty sure he had blue eyes. But that don't make sense, unless he was a half-breed."

Half-breed? Milliardo's eyes widened at the blatant racism. So much for perfectly polite. "Brown hair, Asian or mixed-race features and blue eyes?" He verified.

"Yeah, but… I get them mixed up all the time. After a while, the faces blend together."

"What about the cars? Do they blend together as well?"

The man narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Do you know what kind of car your motel guest drove, mister Grubinger?"

He folded his arms in front of his chest, he recognized the mockery. "A sedan. Blue."

"Could you be any more specific, sir? Make? Model? Do you remember any details of the license plate?"

"No." A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "But you can check for yourself."

"Excuse me?"

The man walked out of his office and waited for Milliardo to join him outside. He nodded across the parking lot. "His car is right there."

Milliardo followed his gaze and spotted an unimpressive blue sedan sandwiched between a silver German car and a red, banged-up truck. "And you're certain that's his car?"

"Yes."

"Can you give me a minute, please? I'll be right back with a few more questions." He was already walking towards the parked car. It was an old Ford, but well maintained. Milliardo fished his phone out of his pocket and selected one of the speed dials.

The phone only rang twice before it was answered. "Agent Lucrezia Noin."

"Noin," He hurried as a way of greeting. "Can you do me a favor and look up the registration for a license plate number for me? My whole team is out in the field and we have no time to waste."

"Sure thing." Noin was happy to help. She had been assisting them during the past three months as the team was a man short with Duo pulled off active duty and before then when he had gone undercover for a couple of months for an investigation.

He read aloud the combination of letters and numbers and Noin told him to hang on for a second. He waited with the phone to his ear, hearing her type on her keyboard. The fact that the car had been left behind didn't support his tentative earlier conclusion that the guest was the killer and was on the run.

"Yeah, got an ID. The car is registered to Hiroshi Yuy. Lives in Philadelphia."

He breathed a sigh of relief, at least they had a good lead and a place to start. "Put out a BOLO on him and could you text me the address?"

"No problem."

"Thank you, Noin." He relished her breathy chuckle.

"Don't sweat it. Good luck."

He said his goodbye and hung up the phone. He made eye-contact with WuFei who was across the parking lot. The Chinese man was still trying to get answers from the maid, but the woman was clearly too upset to talk and he had no idea how to deal with that. Milliardo discretely waved him over. Chang excused himself and left the woman to sniffle into the tissue she was clutching to her face and he jogged over to his boss.

"We have an ID on our guest," Milliardo explained. "Hiroshi Yuy. The address is in Philly. Get Duo, he's still in the motel room, and go check out his place. See what you can find. I'll text you the address."

"Right away, boss." He already started walking away.

"Chang?"

The man turned to face him.

"This is starting to look like a kidnapping. The clock is ticking."

WuFei nodded. "Yes, boss. No such thing as speed limits, I get it." He retrieved Duo from the motel room and the two of them got into Chang's car and sped off.

Barton separated from the gathered crowd and approached him. He handed back the photo of the John Doe and said: "No hits. Nobody knows him."

"That was to be expected."

"But you should really have a talk with the guest in 101, he didn't see anything but he hinted that he heard a lot. Might be helpful."

"Yeah, local LEO's mentioned something about that. I'll go talk to him, hope he has something useful. At least we have a name for our missing guest; Hiroshi Yuy. Duo and Chang are headed for his place now, but since his car is still in the parking lot-"

"Kidnapping," Trowa Barton interjected.

"I'm starting to get that feeling, yes. Check with Forensics, see if they've come up with anything so far. Come find me to brief me on the progress and then you head back to the office and start digging into Yuy's life. If this is a kidnapping there has to be a reason why they took Yuy and left us the Doe."

Barton nodded, quiet as ever and went to work.

Milliardo headed for room 101 where the guest was instructed to wait. They had purposefully kept the potential witnesses sequestered to avoid them influencing each other's accounts of the events. It seemed like this guy might actually know something that could be of help.

He checked the file for the name and knocked on the door. "Professor Eskridge? Agent Peacecraft here, I have some questions for you." He heard the man came shuffling to the door and he appraised the lanky, older fellow when he opened the door for him.

"Could you, please, not say my name so loudly, sir?" He begged pathetically. "What if someone overhears?"

"I apologize, professor Eskridge."

He hastily gestured for the agent to come inside. "Let's get this over with. I really have to go. I don't want to raise suspicions."

Milliardo stepped into the room but left the door ajar so Barton could come in later. "Professor, if you cooperate we can get through this quickly and you will be free to go."

"Fine. Although I don't understand. I already told that other officer everything. This is a senseless repetition of police work. No wonder cases go unsolved when they are handed from one department to another."

Milliardo pursed his lips at the unsubtle jab. "Sergeant Mueller told me you overheard your next door guest last night, could you please tell me what you heard, exactly?"

He laughed nervously and took a seat on the edge of the bed. "Just the kind of things you expect to hear at a motel like this, really."

"I try to remain unbiased, sir. What things are you referring to?" He probed innocently.

He stumbled over his words as he answered: "I heard-… I heard two men have-… they-… Two men enjoyed each other's company, agent Peacecraft."

He reached up to rub his temple, hit with the first throb of a headache. "Just tell me what you heard, professor."

"The two men in the room next door were having sex. Quite loudly."

"Are you certain it wasn't a struggle you overheard?"

He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "No, it was two men having sex. I could hear… them. Their moans. And the bed."

Milliardo nodded. It appeared Yuy and the John Doe were having a sexual relationship. "What time was this?"

"Well, the sex started around midnight. That's when the second guy came to the room. Before then the other guy was alone, he arrived at the room an hour earlier."

"You didn't see any of them?"

"No, I just listened- I mean, I overheard."

He raised his eyebrow at the slip. Professor Eskridge had booked a stay at the motel for the cheap thrill to eavesdrop on the sex-lives of other guests, he concluded. "And they got right to it?"

"Wasted no time." Eskridge blushed.

"Did you hear them say anything that could indicate if they knew each other from before or if it was a first meeting."

"No, when people talk at normal volume I can't hear make out what they say through the walls."

Milliardo noted the undertone of disappointment. "So you didn't hear them talk?"

"No. But I heard them fight."

He looked up from his notebook, intrigued. "They fought? What time was this?"

"After they fucked they were quiet for a while and I thought they had fallen asleep. But then, at one thirty – actually, it was more like five past half -, they started to shout at each other. First, one accused the other of being a coward and then the other guy called him a whore. And then one of them shouted: 'I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!' and then he stormed out."

"He actually threatened to kill him?"

"Yes. He left right after that."

"And what time was that?"

"A quarter to two."

Maybe it wasn't a kidnapping after all then and they were back to the first scenario of a lover's quarrel with deadly results, Milliardo thought to himself. "Thank you, professor, that was very helpful." He closed his notebook.

"Don't you want to hear about what I heard after that?"

Milliardo stared. "You said he stormed out."

"Well, yes, but then half an hour later I hear two guys knock on the door of 102 and the guy who was still in there opened the door and that's when I heard a struggle."

"Two men came in, you're sure?"

"Yes, they were talking to each other before the guest in 102 answered the door. Anyway, they fought. I heard stuff breaking and glass shattering. Everything went real quiet for a second and then there was more kicking and screaming and whoever it was that had come to the door dragged the guest out of the room and put him in the car that was parked right out front and the car sped off with screeching tires and everything. It all happened very fast, they were gone in like five minutes after I heard the knock on the door."

"Why didn't you call the police right away?"

"I'm not even supposed to be here!" He argued. "I have a wife and kids!"

Milliardo shook his head at him. "Did you at least look out the window? Get a view of the vehicle or the men?"

The professor scoffed. "No. Do you expect me, as a citizen, to put myself in harm's way to do your job for you? A job my tax-dollars are paying you for."

He took a moment to bite back an inappropriate response. He needed to be impeccable for this case, not cuss out witnesses. "Not 'harm's way', just a peek out the window," He said through gritted teeth.

Eskridge shook his head.

They both turned to the side at a knock on the door and Trowa poked his head into the room. "Am I interrupting?"

"No. We're done," Stated Milliardo. Addressing the professor he said: "Thank you for your help."

"Can I go now?"

"Unfortunately you have to stay a little longer. An officer will come by later to have you sign all the necessary forms before you are free to go." He didn't respond to the following sputters of protest and he joined his colleague outside.

"He pissed you off, huh?" The agent noted with a grin. He knew Milliardo was only keeping the man from leaving to inconvenience him.

"Yeah… Forensics come up with anything useful?"

Trowa nodded. "Lots of potential. We have the condom, of course, but also long brown hairs in the bed, semen on the sheets and fingerprints all over the place. Obviously most of those prints will be useless, it is a seedy motel room after all and the maid's manicure is much too nice for her to be able to do any real cleaning," He subtly nodded at the woman having a smoke a few yards away from them. "But some could belong to the people involved. Best of all, techs found the phone." He waved one of them over and he was handed a clear plastic evidence bag with a smartphone inside. "I had two guys search the parking lot and they found it in the bushes, must have been tossed as they left the parking lot. The screen's cracked, but it's working. No PIN code required or anything."

Milliardo accepted the evidence bag from the agent. "This is great, Barton. You head back to the office and start digging into Yuy's history, financials and phone records. I'll finish up here."

The tall man nodded and headed for his car.

Milliardo was approached by the coroner for permission to remove the body from the crime scene. After the agent's OK they rolled out the body of the big man in a black body bag on a gurney. Increasingly more reporters had gathered and they swarmed the coroner's van to get a shot of the body bag being taken away.

With his gloved hand he reached into the evidence bag and took out the phone. The cracked touch screen didn't always respond as readily – and the gloves didn't help either – but he was able to access the phone and search through the caller history. Nothing jumped out at him, the last call made dated back three days. He pressed on the icon for messages and the program opened showing the last text message conversation.

His heart jumped up into his throat making him cough and when he swallowed it back down he felt nauseous. "Fucking Hell," He croaked as he stared with disbelieving eyes at the name at the top of the exchange of messages.

Duo.

All the color drained from his face and he felt cold all over when he read the final message sent from Duo's cellphone number to Yuy's phone.

"I hate what you've made me do. What you've turned me into."

The cryptic message sent chills down his spine.

Duo knew Yuy. The implications of that realization frightened him. Surely WuFei would have told Duo the name of the guy they were looking for by now, heck they were probably already at the house, even if Chang hadn't floored it like he had asked him to. Why hadn't Duo called to tell him that he personally knew Yuy – who was looking more and more like a second victim?

Of all the cases, Duo had to be personally involved in a sensitive, high-profile murder and kidnapping… Milliardo's headache intensified.

He called over one of the sergeant assisting on the case and ordered him to get contact information from all the witnesses and guests and let them go for now. He stuffed Yuy's phone back into the evidence bag but he didn't had it over to the Forensic Team, he would keep it for now. He retrieved his own cellphone from the inside pocket of his jacket and dialed Duo's number.

"Maxwell," Duo said when he answered.

"Hey… How's it going?" Milliardo winced at his pathetic attempt to give Duo an opportunity to confess to knowing Yuy.

"Uhm… Good. We're done at the house, there's nothing here that looks like it has to do with anything."

"So, nothing to report at Yuy's house?" Milliardo held his breath and prayed Duo would say: Yuy? What a coincidence. I know a guy whose last name is Yuy.

Duo said no such thing. "Yep. Just a regular place. Clean and organized, but not in an alarming, serial-killer-kind-of-way."

He clenched his fist at his side, feeling the tremble of the tension travel up his arm. "Meet me at the station. Now." He promptly disconnected the line.

Milliardo climbed into his SUV and hurried back to the station. It would take a while longer for Duo and WuFei to get back from Philadelphia, but he needed the time to calm himself and to clear his thoughts, because right now he was thinking crazy things.

Of course he wasn't allowed the necessary peace of mind. His phone rang and he fumbled to put it on speaker and place it in the holder on the dashboard.

"Senior Agent Peacecraft."

"Milliardo," Dorothy started sweetly. "The initial news report just ran on all the local stations. Is there anything you can tell me so we can start with damage control?"

He squeezed his fingers tightly around the steering wheel. The last person he wanted to deal with was Catalonia. "I don't feel comfortable drawing any conclusions this early in the investigation."

She wouldn't be brushed off so easily. "But what about leads? Surely any detective worth his salt would have some leads right now."

He mumbled something unflattering under his breath. "Just tell them there was DNA-evidence in the room, that always makes people confident the case will be closed soon."

"DNA-evidence is useless if you don't have a suspect to compare it with…"

"Well then don't mention that," He snapped, ignoring the fact that she was fishing for more information. "I have to go now, miss Catalonia."

"I expect to hear from you again soon, with a decent update."

"Sure." He hung up just as he pulled the car into the parking garage under the station.

During the investigation their every move would be scrutinized. A personal connection to one of the victims was grounds for reassignment. Milliardo thought the excuse to hand over the case to another team would be welcomed, but the fact that Duo hid knowing Yuy, not to mention that ominous final text message, left an uncomfortable feeling in his gut.

After forty minutes of pacing back and forth in his office, trying to decide how to approach the issue, a knock on his door announced the arrival of Duo and WuFei. He was quick to dismiss the Chinese agent, telling him to help Trowa dig. WuFei resented desk-duty, but he never argued with a direct order. He left swiftly and without a word. Duo remained standing there, in the doorway, quirking an eyebrow at his boss' odd behavior.

"What's gotten into you?"

"Please be honest with me," Milliardo begged urgently.

Duo shrugged and his lips formed that carefree smile that Milliardo really hated sometimes and now more than ever. "About what? I told you I'm fine. Jeez, you come into work early one day-"

"Hiroshi Yuy," Milliardo blurted and he watched his reaction closely, but Duo's face betrayed nothing.

"What about him?"

"Please admit that you know him."

Duo let out a laugh. "Well, I just went through his underwear drawer but that hardly means I know the guy. Certainly not more than WuFei, you should ask him what he found in the nightstand…" He winked.

Milliardo sighed and sat back on the edge of his desk. He felt like concrete was being poured into his gut. "Why are you lying?"

Defensively, Duo shot back: "I'm not lying!"

"Stop it! Just stop it!" He produced the evidence back from his pocket and he showed the agent the phone. "We found his cellphone in the bushes, Duo. You guys have been exchanging text messages. Clearly, you know him!"

Realizing he had been caught, Duo deflated and he tried: "It's not a big deal-"

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you lie?"

"Because I knew the team would get taken off the case! You and I both know what happens to cases when they get shuttled from one department to another, from team to team. Every time a case changes hands, the odds of it going unsolved double."

"That's hardly an exact science."

"Call it a ballpark-figure. The exact numbers don't matter. What matters is that we are the best. So I had a choice, tell you I know the guy – barely, by the way – and have us booted off the case, or keep it a secret. It was a choice between giving the best odds and the worst odds, what was I supposed to do?"

Milliardo scrubbed his face with his hands. Duo appeared genuine and truthful, but he wasn't sure if he could trust him now. Searching for more information so he could decide whether or not he should believe his teammate, he asked: "How do you know Hiroshi Yuy?"

"For starts I know him as 'Heero Yuy'. And we met in rehab. As of late, we've been going to same AA sessions and meeting up once in a while. That's what we text about."

Milliardo narrowed his eyes but he had no way to tell if Duo was lying or not. The man was an excellent liar, which was why he had always been one of the best undercover agents. "What about that last text?"

"What last text?"

"I hate what you've made me do. What you've turned me into," He recited, he already knew the words by heart.

"That's private."

"Nothing is private in a murder investigation, Duo," He pressed.

"He was thinking about having a drink again," Duo said reluctantly. "I got mad at him. I didn't mean to treat him like one of those asshole counsellors with the 'strict-dad' act, but I was afraid he was going to lapse."

"When was this?"

"The day before yesterday. In the afternoon."

"You didn't see him again after that?"

Duo snorted. "No. And also 'No' to your real question."

"What was my real question?"

"If I was at that motel last night."

Milliardo nodded. That had been his real question. "You've never been to the motel?"

"No. Never."

He took a deep breath and said: "Okay. But you have to agree this looks bad."

"I had nothing to do with this," The agent assured him. "I can remain impartial and professional. I swear. I don't even know the guy that well. I don't know much about him."

"Alright. One last thing: If you met up with him the day before yesterday, why is the text message from last night? Around the coroner's estimated time of death?"

"I couldn't sleep. It's a freaky coincidence." He shrugged.

For whatever reason the simple and straightforward answer calmed some of Milliardo's nerves. He had to remind himself that the man standing before him was not some unknown suspect, he was Duo Maxwell, a decorated agent and a long-time friend. Duo was a good liar, but Milliardo had never had any reason to suspect Duo had ever tried to feed him a lie since he came clean about his drinking. They had been working together on-and-off for the past seven years, starting when Duo joined the undercover squad and then later when he joined Milliardo's investigative team at the Penssylvania Bureau of Criminal Investigation, where they had been team-member for nearly four years now. "I choose to trust you," Milliardo said meaningfully. "Don't make me a fool."

"I won't. So we stay on the case?"

"Yes, unfortunately I agree with you; pawning this off to another team won't help the investigation and it certainly won't make the state police look good if the media were to find out we dumped it on someone else."

Duo let out a hearty laugh. "Now I get it. Relena got you on this case. Otherwise the politics of it all wouldn't bother you so much."

"Gloat later, we have work to do."

As if on cue his desk phone rang. He ordered Duo to go down to the bullpen and split the work with Chang and Barton, hopefully they would find a new lead soon. Once he was left alone he answered the call as gruffly as ever, expecting it to be Catalonia or maybe even his sister.

"This is officer Alex, I'm at the crime scene, getting everyone's contact information as you said. The manager, mister Grubinger, was under the impression that he had to wait for you because you still had some questions, is that correct?"

"Fuck! Sorry, yes," After discovering the unsettling text message from Duo on Yuy's phone, Milliardo had forgotten all about completing his interview with the manager. So much for being impeccable, what a stupid mistake!

"Mister Grubinger would like to go home, he's been on shift for nearly forty hours."

"Please tell him to wait a little longer and make a copy of the log for room 102. I'll be there in about forty minutes with a couple more questions and to get the log and then he is free to go home."

"Sure. I'll keep him a little longer."

Milliardo hurried out of his office and briefly stopped by the bullpen to direct his team. WuFei and Duo were to keep looking into Yuy's history. So far they had come up with nothing noteworthy; no past hospitalizations, no prior arrests, no history of drug-abuse, no restraining orders, no gang affiliations, no substantial wealth, no family. Yuy was a loner, Duo confirmed this, but an upstanding citizen for all intents and purposes. He had been working as customer tech-support out of his home since he got out of college, which meant his phone records were useless because strangers were calling his home number from all over the state all the time, redirected by the company. Two nights a week the twenty-seven year old volunteered at the suicide prevention hotline. He paid his bills on time and never caused any trouble.

Trowa would hound the lab to make sure they made quick work of processing the evidence. He felt confident they were dealing with a kidnapping so the evidence for their case had priority over others. He was especially curious to know if the fingerprints of the John Doe set off any alarms in their system. As it appeared, the John Doe was an accomplice to the kidnapper who got away with Yuy. Yuy could have killed him, trying to fight off his two abductors. If they could identify the John Doe, his records might lead them to his partner. He wondered if Doe had been the one to have sex with Yuy that night, they would have to match his DNA with the semen in the condom or on the sheets. If it wasn't a match, the kidnapper who got away with him might have been the sexual partner, or someone unknown to them as of yet was involved in the sexual activity, separate of the following incident.

Forty-five minutes later he arrived back at the motel. The number of reporters had dwindled, but those who had remained swarmed around him, pushing microphones in his face and shouting questions at him. After saying 'No comment' about a million times Milliardo made it to behind the police tape where he was safe from them. In the manager's office Grubinger and Alex were waiting for him. The manager was understandably irritated.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting sir. I only have a few follow-up questions and then you can go home."

"Fine," He growled.

"We have identified the guest of room 102 as mister Yuy, thanks to your help with finding the car." He produced a picture of Yuy that they had pulled from his DMV record and he showed it to the manager. "Can you confirm this is the guest?"

"Yeah. Wow, I was right after all; Oriental with blue eyes. I'll be damned."

Ignoring his unnecessary racial commentary, Milliardo continued: "However, the deceased man that was found in the room was not mister Yuy. My colleague showed you a picture of the man we found, correct?"

"Yes. That busted-up face. Didn't recognize him."

Milliardo nodded. "Was it common for mister Yuy to receive guests in his motel room?"

"Always. He was never here alone."

"Different visitors, or the same person every time?"

"Same guy. They never arrived together. The guy who rented the room, this Yuy guy, you say, he asked for two keys. So him and the other fellow both had a key. They'd arrive about an a hour or half an hour apart. Yuy sometimes spent the night, but that other guy… he never did."

"Could you possibly describe him?"

Grubinger rolled his eyes. "Well, I could try, I guess I was right about blue-eyes, so…" He looked off to the side, searching his memory. "Real tall fellow," He started.

"Please, be as precise as possible. How tall?"

"Six feet? Probably a little more. I never saw this one up close, only from across the parking lot and in the dark, not to mention."

"I understand, sir," He tried to be sympathetic and patient. "Whatever you can recall could prove crucial. Please."

"He was pretty well-built, I think. Broad shoulders."

Milliardo scribbled down the description in his notebook. It wasn't very specific, but so far it did match the overall physique of the John Doe, so maybe he slept with Yuy, got into a fight with them and then waited for a buddy to come help him kidnap the guest, during which process Doe got killed. "Anything else?"

"Pretty sure this one was fully white."

"Thanks." John Doe was Caucasian. It wasn't much, but maybe once more information started coming in the description would end up being helpful after all. "Officer Alex asked you to make a copy of the log?"

"Yes." Grubinger reached for a stack of papers and pushed it towards him. "I made a copy of every page in the log when I saw the guys go onto the room. I kept track because there's no point sending in the cleaning lady if they haven't been in there."

"Right."

"It's possible not all their visits have been logged. My assistant manager handles business while I'm away. He is not as vigilant as I am. He might have missed a couple of times."

"That's fine, sir. Hopefully this will be enough to be of use." He tucked the papers under his arm. "Thank you for your time, you can go home now." He shook hands with the man and then turned around to go back to his car, but he had only taken a single step before Grubinger called:

"Hold on a second! I nearly forgot!"

Milliardo spun around. "Yes?"

"Seeing your hair reminded me of something."

He raised his eyebrows. "My hair?"

"Yes, I thought of it when you were here earlier, but completely forgot about it again. I really need to get some sleep."

"What did my hair remind you of, mister Grubinger?" He demanded.

"The guy, Yuy's visitor, the one with the second key, not the dead fellow," He rambled before he finally got to the point: "He had long hair just like you. Also in a braid. Always in a braid."

Milliardo's mouth went dry and his heart started to race.

"But his hair was brown."

Goddammit. "And he was here last night?"

"Arrived just before midnight."

"Did you see him leave?"

"No, but at midnight I lock the door to the office and I sit in the back and watch TV. I'm only here for emergencies after midnight; people ring the bell out front."

"T- Thank you, mister Grubinger." He ran out of the office and back to his car, evading reporters and photographers as he went.

Milliardo raced back to the station in record time. That sick, uncomfortable feeling had settled in his stomach again and it wouldn't be going away. Duo had lied to him. Again. He said he had never been at the motel but what were the odds of another man with long brown hair in Yuy's life? Then a memory from that day clicked; Trowa told him about the long brown hairs found in the bed. Duo's hairs. He was having some kind of illicit affair with the victim. He didn't even know his colleague was gay, in fact, Duo never mentioned anything about his personal life.

What did it mean? Was he seriously considering Duo's involvement in a murder and a kidnapping?

He shook his head and pounded his tight fist against the steering wheel. It couldn't be! Especially not now, not since he had been sober. He had some anger and violence issue before, but that was always the booze. Duo was a good cop and a friend and he had been better since he had gotten help. He hadn't had one of his outbursts since before he went to rehab, which was mostly why Milliardo allowed him to return to active duty last week. Had it been too soon? Had he started drinking again without Milliardo noticing?

When Duo was a drunk – although no one other than Milliardo ever found out he had been a drunk – he had a short temper and he could snap. He would pick fights with co-workers or get too rough with suspects. Some officers started calling him 'Two-face', referring to his ability to switch from friendly to dangerous in the blink of an eye, and his days in the undercover unit when he was the best at pretending to be a crook, almost too good, some people whispered in the hallways. He never took the nickname too seriously, because Duo always ended up being best buddies again with whoever he had picked a fight with. He seemed harmless.

It was tempting to storm into the bullpen and pull Duo aside by his collar and confront him with the new revelation. But he feared Duo would simply feed him another lie and it would taste so good that Milliardo couldn't help but swallow it whole. He needed more proof so Duo wouldn't be able to deny the truth and he would finally stop lying.

He couldn't do it by himself, so he discretely called Trowa to his office. Chang was a fine agent but he was a stickler for rules, if the Chinese man got wind of this, he would be quick to slap handcuffs on Duo and it wouldn't matter who was watching. Milliardo preferred to do things quietly. If, by some welcome miracle, it would turn out to be a misunderstanding after all, he didn't want any careers or lives to be irreparably damaged by this incident.

Before Trowa could meet up with him Milliardo took a seat at his desk and laid Yuy's phone next to the copies of the log. The text conversation with Duo was always about meeting up at their 'usual place'. Duo wanted him to believe that was some place innocent, but with an increasingly heavy feeling in his heart Milliardo started to realize that the text messages lined up perfectly with the dates that room 102 had been in use. Every time Duo and Yuy agreed to meet, Grubinger had a corresponding mark in his log. The long-haired man the manager had seen was definitely Duo.

Barton knocked on his office door and let himself in. "Something wrong, boss?"

With pale face Milliardo looked up at his teammate. "Sit down, please," He gestured at the chair across from his desk, where his sister, the State attorney General had been seated mere hours before. If his suspicions would be proven true – and it was starting to look that way – his entire team was in big trouble, but Duo most of all.

Trowa apprehensively took a seat.

Deciding there was no time to cushion the blow, the agent started bluntly: "Duo knows our missing person, Yuy, and he has been lying about it. He told me he barely knows the guy and I bought it, hook, line and sinker, but they know each other better than he has admitted. Duo has been meeting up with Yuy regularly, at the Sunburst French Creek motel. And he was there last night according to the manager."

"Jesus."

Milliardo nodded. He could tell Trowa was having a hard time processing it and he looked as shocked and perturbed as he had. "A couple of hours after the Doe's TOD and the kidnapping, Duo sent Yuy a text: 'I hate what you've made me do. What you've turned me into'."

Trowa stared a moment and then started to laugh uncomfortably. "What are you saying? That Duo killed our John Doe and kidnapped Yuy?"

"I don't know. But I do know that if this was any other case, any other suspect, we would be convinced we had our guy."

"But this isn't another suspect. This is Duo. He's not…" He made a dismissive gesture. "Yes, it looks bad, but we know him. He wouldn't do this."

"You're probably right. But as much as I hate it, I'm not convinced." He rubbed his throbbing temples. "We'll handle this quietly, for now."

"I don't know how long we will be able to keep this quiet," Trowa spoke up. "I was downstairs in the lab. The techs have already come up with a match for some of the fingerprints they lifted off the scene."

"Duo's?"

"Yes. I still don't think he did this, but now there is physical evidence he was in that room. I covered for him by telling them that he just forgot to put on his gloves while he searched the scene," Trowa and Milliardo both know that was a blatant lie. "They accepted the explanation but they aren't stupid, they are definitely suspicious now. He's on their radar. And they've already concluded that Doe's DNA doesn't match the semen from the sheets or the condom."

He ran his hand through his hair, not sure how to proceed.

"Did you know Duo was gay?"

Milliardo shook his head. "No, I had no idea."

"Me neither. Not that I ever heard about any girlfriends either, but I never thought… It's weird. I mean, you think you know someone."

"Yeah…" Milliardo stared into thin air. That was exactly the problem that had him so worried. They all thought they knew Duo so well, well enough to be able to state with certainly that he wouldn't kill or kidnap anybody. But how well did they actually know him?

"I guess it's possible that he's not gay. Just because he met up with some guy in a gay motel doesn't have to mean anything. It might not be his used condom that was in the trash."

"Maybe."

Trowa jumped up from his chair. "I'm getting back to work. The best way to prove Duo's innocence at this point is to find Yuy and ask him who was really responsible."

"If Yuy is still alive…"

"We'll find him, and he will exonerate Duo. Dead or alive," Trowa asserted and he walked out of the office.

Milliardo called after him: "Trowa, tell Duo I want to talk to him."

The agent nodded. "Shall I send him up to your office?"

"No. Tell him to meet me in interrogation room 2."

Trowa paused and it looked like he was about to comment on the request, but he pressed his lips tightly together and nodded in agreement instead.

Milliardo gathered all the accumulated paperwork on the case in his arms and headed downstairs to the interrogation rooms. He checked the observation room to make sure it was clear and he used his master key to lock the door, to prevent anyone from snooping on their conversation. He wasn't ready yet for other agents to start worrying about the things he was worrying about; that one of their own had 'gone off the reservation'. He had never seen it happen up-close, but he knew it did happen, more often than anyone dared to admit. It was always ugly and the effects spread through an entire department, the ripple could disband teams and dissolve trust, even between those who are innocent.

He wasn't ready yet to admit he might have made a huge mistake by helping Duo hide his alcoholism and letting him come back to active duty.

He took a seat in the interrogation room, with his back towards the two-way mirror, leaving Duo the only other available seat across from him; the 'chair on the other side of the table'. The chair that faced the mirror. The chair where they only ever seated people of interest, suspects and criminals. The last person Milliardo had interviewed, sitting in that chair, was a rapist and a murderer. He never expected he would ever have to ask a team member to take a seat in that chair.

The door opened and Duo stood there, holding the doorknob in one hand, the doorpost in the other. A sly grin spread across his lips and he was about to make a joke, but Milliardo silenced him and told him to take a seat, gesturing at the empty chair.

With his brows twitching into a frown the agent stepped into the room, letting the door fall shut behind him. He paused by the chair, stalling with a quizzical expression.

"Sit down, Duo," Milliardo repeated, more strictly that time.

Duo sat down in that chair the way any cop would; insulted and indignant. "What's up with the new digs, Zechs? Office getting refurbished?"

"Don't call me Zechs." Zechs Merquise had been the name he had used during an undercover operation with Duo years ago. Milliardo had never been comfortable with pretending to be a criminal and as an undercover cop he had, at times, been forced to cross a line to keep up the charade, beyond which line you aren't really pretending anymore. The name marked a period in his life that he preferred to forget, but Duo still liked to tease him with it – it was a ridiculous name after all.

"What are we doing here, Mill?" Duo asked glibly. "What's going on?"

"You tell me. No lies this time," Milliardo bit back.

Duo leaned back in the seat. His demeanor shifted. A dark shadow settled over his eyes. Instinctively he knew the game of pretend was over. He must have known the truth would come out eventually.

When it was clear he wasn't going to volunteer any information, Milliardo decided to corner him with the information that he had already gathered. "You've been meeting up with Yuy at that motel twice a week, every week, for two months. You even ditched rehab a couple of times to meet up with him at the motel. And you were there last night. The manager remembers you, thanks to your braid."

He chuckled bitterly. "The goddamn braid." Absentmindedly he pulled the end of it into his lap and fidgeted with the strands of hair.

"Forensics have already matched fingerprints found at the scene with yours. I'm guessing the long brown hairs in the bed and the used condom in the trash are also yours, correct?"

"Correct."

In hindsight it was apparent Duo had been hiding his sexuality all this time by avoiding all talk about sex or romantic interests or woes, but Milliardo didn't understand why. He was a little insulted at the thought that Duo might have had him pegged as a homophobe. He knew the force wasn't as accepting as it could and should be, but Milliardo wasn't 'the force', he was a friend, right? Yes, Milliardo harbored some innocent bias: even though he had never suspected Duo was gay, now that he knew he was in a sexual relationship with another man, he somehow instantly pictured Duo being the one wearing the condom in the situation and the shorter, younger Yuy to be the one to ejaculate on the sheets. He realized it was a silly stereotype, but it was something he could deal with, something he would have amended if Duo had just been honest with him about who he was. He didn't know if he should be angry with Duo for not trusting him, or if he should pity him for not being able to entrust anyone with this secret.

Milliardo sighed. "Why did you lie to me about your relationship with him?"

"I already told you," Duo responded irritably. "I didn't want our team to get booted off the case because of my personal relationship with Heero. We are the best team and I want the best to be out looking for him."

"You had to have known we would find the link between you and Yuy soon enough."

"Of course I did," He snarled. "But I was hoping that it would take a while, so we would at least find a decent lead before then."

Milliardo shook his head. "What have you done, Duo? This looks so bad…"

"Come on! Obviously I didn't have anything to do with the murder or the kidnapping!" He crossed his arms in front of his chest defensively as he continued: "So I slept with Heero, so what? It is irrelevant to the case."

Milliardo let out a grim laugh. "Irrelevant? In any other case we would be convinced we had our guy. You were there last night, Duo. The guest next door heard Yuy have sex with someone and then they had a fight. That was you, wasn't? You slept with Yuy and then you argued." He watched Duo clench his fists. "He called you a coward. You called him a whore… And then you said you would kill him!"

Duo looked up at him with wild, dangerous eyes. "So I said something stupid?! What else is new?! It's like the guy next door from us said, I left! I stormed out! I didn't kidnap him or kill that other guy!" He shouted.

"What time did you leave?"

"A quarter to two and I didn't come back. I went home."

Milliardo glanced down at his notes. The time corresponded with what the professor had told him.

With uncharacteristic vulnerability, Duo said: "You know I had nothing to do with this. You know me!"

Milliardo stared at him. "Do I?"

Duo narrowed his eyes.

Milliardo shook his head and was trembling all over as he mused aloud: "Everyone calls you 'Duo', not 'agent Maxwell' and you know everyone by name. You hand out donuts when we close a case and you are always the one to remind me when I'm about to forget someone's birthday… You have all of us convinced you are our best friend, but nobody really knows you. I know nothing about you."

Duo looked panicked. He wiped his face with his hands and tried and failed to remain composed.

"I don't know what you do in your spare time. I don't know what kind of sports you like. I've never been to your apartment. I never hear you mention a girlfriend… or a boyfriend rather. I don't know if you have pet. I don't know why you keep your hair long. I don't know what you did last Thanksgivings, or who you celebrated Christmas with, or any holiday."

"But none of that is important," He argued. "You know me, you know I wouldn't…"

"You have a temper," Milliardo reminded him, "I've seen you snap. I know you can be violent and dangerous when you've been drinking. That's what I know."

He gritted his teeth. "I haven't been drinking, I told you!" He slammed his fists onto the table.

"You also told me you were in rehab two full months, you never mentioned checking out twice a week to go to that damn motel!"

"To be with Heero, not to get wasted! I haven't had a drink in months!" He was panting and his face was flushed.

Milliardo growled in response: "You can't seriously expect me to still be able to trust you." He wasn't sure what he was implying. Could Duo have done this? In spite of everything, he couldn't believe it.

They both jumped in their seat when the door burst open unannounced.

"Boss," said Chang gruffly, "A word?"

Milliardo would brush him off and tell him he was in the middle of something if it wasn't for the agent's furious expression. He had the sinking feeling that the cat was out of the bag. "Yeah." He stood up on unsteady legs and joined WuFei in the hallway.

"What are you doing?" Chang demanded, wasting no time. He nodded back at the interrogation room where Duo was waiting. "Are you protecting him?"

"I just had to talk to him first."

"He's a suspect, why haven't you added that to the case file?" Chang pressed on in an accusing tone.

"All we have right now is circumstantial evidence. The witness, the professor, said that he stormed out and that two guys came back. I'm not convinced Duo is one of those two guys. In spite of how it looks, he could still be telling the truth. His sexual relationship with Yuy doesn't mean he is responsible for the death and the kidnapping."

"He's sticking with the story that he left long before?"

"Yes, he said he went home at 1:45 and according to professor Eskridge that was half an hour before the two unknown men came to the room to take Yuy."

Chang chose that moment to show his boss a grainy photograph.

Warily, Milliardo accepted the picture and studied the subject; a tall man in black clothes walking into a store.

"Here's more."

Milliardo was handed another photo and in the photo Duo was clearly recognizable, facing the camera as he stood at the register. He was visibly upset. "Where is this?" He wondered breathily.

Chang didn't say anything from a moment and placed a third and final photograph on top of the others; Duo walking back to the exit of the store, carrying a bottle of water and a new pack of cigarettes. Finally, he explained: "I decided to check the gas stations nearest to the motel, on the 76. The one directly East, towards Philadelphia and the first one West, on the way back to Harrisburg. These security images are of the gas station ten minutes West of the motel. Notice the time stamps? He made those purchases at 2:28. The time-line doesn't match. Duo admitted that he was in the room but he claimed to have left at a quarter to two, right? But if he drove straight home, leaving the motel at 1:45, he should have reached the gas station on his way home to Harrisburg only ten minutes later. Actually, with the way Duo speeds, it should have been less than ten minutes." With his index finger he tapped the photos cradled in Milliardo's palms. "Instead, he stops at the gas station over half an hour later than expected."

Milliardo pressed his lips together tightly, left distraught by the news. "The witness said the two unknown men came back half an hour after Duo left. So that's a quarter pas two. And according to that witness the struggle lasted only about five minutes and then Yuy was put into the car and the kidnapper sped off. If the kidnapper headed towards Harrisburg they would have passed the gas station to the West a little less than ten minutes later… Which would be around two thirty. Fuck." The revelation caused his hands to shake.

WuFei, not known for his sympathetic nor empathetic abilities, expressed he wanted to take over the interrogation.

"I got this, Chang."

"It wasn't an offer, boss," He said. "I'm not sure if you can be impartial on this one."

"Excuse me?"

"You are known to cover for other agents when they've slipped up."

"Yes, when they didn't file a report or time or double-parked their car, not when they are suspected of a serious crime!"

"If you don't let me take over the interview you leave me no choice but to report the new developments to the chief."

Milliardo glared at the agent but he knew there was no arguing with the man when he was like that. He had to admit that he didn't mind not having to go back in there to face Duo, he felt sick to his stomach and WuFei had the right to question his ability to remain impartial. Duo continued to be able to fool him and he had to consider that his personal investment in Duo allowed him to be fooled. He was too desperate for the agent to be innocent after all. Chang had no such emotional investments. He could compartmentalize. Besides, the Chinese man was probably doing them all a favor by taking over the interrogation and not heading straight for Chief Khushrenada's office. "Okay," Milliardo agreed and he handed back the photographic evidence. "I'll continue to work the case with Barton. You get the full story out of him." He watched the agent disappear into the interrogation room without another word. He took a deep breath, straightened his clothes and headed to the bullpen to find Trowa.

He brought Trowa up to speed on all the disconcerting developments and inquired if Trowa had managed to dig up anything that would either prove Duo's innocence or get them any closer to finding Yuy. Unfortunately there were no clues leading them to the victim and no apparent reasons for anyone else to want to kidnap him.

"What about the John Doe in the morgue?" Milliardo questioned. "Did his fingerprints or DNA give any hits in our database?"

"I haven't checked yet if the computer finished the search. Hold on." He stalked over to his desk and typed in a password to unlock the screensaver. Both their curiosity was piqued by a blinking alarm at the center of the screen. "Looks like we got a hit." Leaning forward and resting his weight on his palms on the surface of the desk he clicked the message and a file opened.

Milliardo's heart skipped a beat. They could really use an ID on the John Doe to move the case along and – hopefully – in a direction that didn't lead back to Duo as their prime suspect. "Is he an old friend? Did we get a name?"

"No such luck."

Luck was nowhere to be found this cursed day, it appeared.

"His fingerprints match prints that were found at the scene of another investigation," Trowa summarized as his emerald eyes scanned the lines of text. "We don't have a name but…" He paused and gave his boss an ominous look. "Sets of his prints were found scattered around the White Fang clubhouse, the gang led by Quinn Carnbee, A.K.A 'Quinze'. That's the case Duo last went undercover for. Duo got shot during the raid of the clubhouse when we came to arrest Quinze."

Milliardo nodded. "Yeah. The investigation was actually a follow-up on an op Duo and I did together six years ago when we were both on the undercover squad. We could only get evidence on a couple of lieutenants back then. My cover got blown during the arrest but Duo was never found out, so when we got another lead last summer Duo went under again."

Trowa looked back at the screen. "It looks like our John Doe was a member of White Fang. Could this be some kind of retaliation? Duo's testimony will send their boss to prison for fifteen to twenty years, once the case goes to court."

"The gang has been quiet since the arrest. Most of the inner circle has jumped ship to other local biker gangs, using information and bits and pieces of the business as leverage to get accepted into the new crowd. White Fang itself is all but dissolved."

"So what does it mean that at least one White Fang member came to the motel? I think it could be some kind of personal revenge plot."

Milliardo leaned his hip against the desk and stared at Duo's abandoned workplace, deep in thought. "But why take Yuy?" He wondered after a moment of contemplative silence. "If a gang member wanted revenge they would have simply killed Duo. They have no use for Yuy."

"Maybe they intended to come for Duo but missed him by half an hour. They had to improvise, so they decided to kidnap Yuy." Trowa offered, his voice carrying a tone of hope.

"It's possible," Milliardo agreed cautiously. "But we shouldn't dismiss the other possibility…"

Trowa simply quirked an eyebrow.

"Duo has been part of that gang as an undercover cop for a total of almost two years. He was in deep. I know we don't want to consider it, but the messed-up time-line prompts a scenario that we cannot yet rule out: Duo got into a fight with his lover. He even threatened to kill him, that's how heated things got. Maybe he got so upset with Yuy that he called on the help of an old buddy he knew from his days as part of the biker gang. He waited half an hour for John Doe to get there and then the two of them went in to kill Yuy."

Trowa argued: "But Duo is a big guy and Yuy's, according to his driver's license, is nearly a foot shorter than Duo and weighs a buck twenty soaking wet. Duo wouldn't need any help to overpower Yuy. He could have killed him himself."

"True, although it does appear Yuy managed to get the upper hand on John Doe and slam his face into the sink, killing him, so he's stronger than he seems. But I'm not necessarily suggesting Duo might have needed more muscle to take him down. He could have called him in for his expertise on getting rid of a body. That could have been Doe's job when White Fang was still up-and-running. When Doe got killed during the attack, whoever the accomplice was – whether it was Duo or someone else – decided to take Yuy, dead or alive, but felt confident leaving Doe behind, probably trusting he would either never be identified or at the very least not linked to him. Leaving Doe but taking Yuy suggest there would be a link between Yuy and the remaining kidnapper."

Trowa exhaled loudly and ran his hand through his hair. He knew it was a valid scenario. "Normally, yeah, the body that gets hidden is the body that leads back to the killer. Whereas if the killer thinks a body won't lead back to them, they'll leave it behind. But this is all under the presumption that Yuy is dead. At the moment the evidence suggests kidnapping."

"Does it?" Milliardo challenged. "Kidnapping needs motive, in most cases of adult-abductions the motive is money. There hasn't been a ransom demand."

"He doesn't really have any significant funds," Trowa supplied. "He has a pretty decent savings account, but-"

"If anyone would be willing to risk going to jail for kidnapping for – what? – ten thousand dollars' worth of savings?"

"Eight," Trowa informed, glancing at the paperwork they had gathered on the victim.

"Eight. If they wanted that cash, they would have moved in on it already, they would have forced him to withdraw the money by now, but there has been no activity and now his bank account is on lock down thanks to the kidnapping." He consulted his watch for the time and concluded: "It's been a little over twelve hours since the abduction. No one has attempted to get any money out of this. I feel confident money was not the objective." He informed bitterly: "About ninety percent of adult abductions, not motivated by money, end in the death of the victim within the first four hours."

"Ten percent is enough for me," The tall agent said poignantly. "Whatever the nature of Duo's relationship with this guy is, Yuy obviously means something to Duo. I'm not giving up on finding this guy alive, it's what we do when a loved-one of one of our own goes missing. We move heaven and earth to find them. If Duo turns out to be innocent, I want him to know we did everything we could to not just prove his innocence but also to find his friend."

"Fuck. You're right." He scrubbed his face, he needed to focus. "But we find the victims by finding the kidnapper. I think we should keep following the trail Duo left. If the kidnapping of Yuy is not about money, I have a feeling it might be about Duo, for revenge, like you said. I think that by working through all the evidence that could implicate him, we'll eventually come across something that won't fit and that piece will lead us to the person responsible."

"So what's the strategy?"

"Start looking into Duo's phone records, home and cellphone."

Trowa made a face at the thought of snooping into Duo's personals.

"I know, but at the very least we might be able to prove wrong the theory that he called a hitman from the motel parking lot. So start with the cell." He paused and looked around, making sure they were out of earshot from other agents, before he continued in a more hushed tone: "Duo didn't take leave for physical therapy. He went to rehab for a drinking problem; Golden Horizons. I covered for him."

Trowa smiled sadly. "I know, boss."

"What?" He was more than a little perturbed to hear that. "How?"

He smirked. "I'm a detective."

"Right." Perhaps it had been silly of him to think they could hide such a huge secret from their teammates, but the lack of a reaction had always convinced him they had gotten away with the deceit. "What about Chang? Surely if he knew he would have reported it."

Trowa shrugged. "I don't know. Chang didn't report it to the chief, but he is also a good detective. I don't know what goes on in his head."

"Let's hope he is on our side and stays that way. We need him to find Yuy and the truth."

"I'll start on his caller history, cell, home and at Golden Horizons. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to check out Duo's apartment and then I'm going to swing by the gas station to ask if the store-manager ever noticed anything suspicious. Check on WuFei and Duo before you get to work on those calls, alright? See if Duo can explain that extra half an hour." He patted Barton on his shoulder and then started for the elevator. He hadn't even made it across the bullpen when someone barked his name most authoritatively and he stopped dead in his tracks. His tie felt tighter in that moment somehow and he had to resist the urge to adjust it before he even looked over.

As feared, chief Khushrenada was glaring at him from across the room. With a curl of his finger – like an angry dad – he motioned Milliardo to follow him. In silence the two of them went up two floors and ended up in the chief's office. Khushrenada demonstratively pulled out a chair for Milliardo and once the agent was seated the chief took lowered himself onto the corner of his desk, looming over the other man.

"Sir?" Milliardo finally spoke.

"I just got a call from our lovely, yet oddly intimidating State Attorney General – I believe you know her?"

"Yeah, I think we've met once or twice…"

"She inquired about the Sunburst French Creek motel case that she had apparently personally appropriated from the local police department and signed over to you, with the request to be kept informed of any significant developments. She called to inform me that you have disregarded that request and wondered if I would personally look into it."

The little wench went over my head, Milliardo thought to himself bitterly.

"Imagine my surprise when I go downstairs to inform myself on the case and the progress being made and forensics tell me that they've found the fingerprints of one of your agents at the crime scene."

He cringed. Trowa's clever lie about Duo neglecting to wear gloves at the crime scene during their investigation hadn't worked to keep them from making an official note of it.

"And two of your agents are currently occupying interrogation room 2." Khushrenada looked at him expectantly.

"Sir, I apologize for how this looks. Through a series of unfortunate coincidences agent Maxwell has been implicated in the case," Was his diplomatic response. "However, I assure you that we have a handle on the case and we can and will conduct the investigation in a professional and impartial manner befitting to the bureau."

Khushrenada rubbed his chin in thought. "You know that protocol dictates that an investigation should be handled by a team that has no personal connection to the case."

"Yes, sir. I'm aware this is not ideal. But this investigation can't switch hands again, not at this point. Not if we want to find the victim alive."

"If your agent is guilty than the victim is probably already dead."

"But what if Duo is innocent and we don't find Yuy in time because we felt compelled to hand over the case to another team?"

Khushrenada walked around his desk and took a seat in his large, leather chair. He briefly consulted the copy of the case file on his desk. "Do you think Duo is innocent?"

Milliardo took a deep breath. He considered lying, but then he reminded himself that only the truth could be of help at that point. No more lies, from anybody. "I don't know."

The chief nodded. "Thank you for your honesty. I trust that you can handle this. I know you've gone out of your way to protect fellow officers in the past, but I assume you agree that if Duo turns out to be guilty, he doesn't deserve protection."

"Yes, sir. If he is involved he will not evade justice," He readily assured him.

"Good. But now my problem is: How do I sell this to your sister? I'm obligated to inform her on these developments and she will likely press to get your team off the case to save her face." He grimaced.

"Public perception matters most to my sister, yes. You can use this to your advantage to persuade her," Milliardo advised. "Remind her how bad it will look if the gay kidnapping victim is not found in time because the state police wasted time trying to pawn off the case because they didn't think they could be impartial. And, if Duo is indeed innocent, it will look even worse; we will have rejected to tackle an investigation because we 'immediately' assumed our gay colleague was responsible and we didn't even fight to acquit him."

A smile spread on the chief's lips. "Thanks for the tip."

"Sure. She never listens to me, but I think if it comes from you she won't object."

"Alright," He pulled the phone towards him. "I'll deal with our overzealous State Attorney General. You clean up this mess. And hurry." He shot him a meaningful look.

"Yes, sir." Milliardo hurried out of his seat and out of the office.

He wondered if chief Khushrenada had also figured out the true reason for Duo's three-month-absence from the force and for a brief, selfish moment he feared what would happen to his own career if Duo was proven guilty and it was uncovered that Milliardo had snuck him into rehab and had, perhaps, prematurely let him come back to active duty. He fervently shook his head and he decided not to linger on it. He had more pressing matters to worry about. First priority was finding Yuy alive. Hopefully that was still possible.

Before going down to the parking garage to get his car and head to Duo's apartment and the gas station as planned, he dropped by the bullpen looking for Trowa, hoping for an update that was of use. But the tall agent was not at his desk. With a frown he headed down the hallway to the interrogation rooms where both Trowa and WuFei were waiting outside the door of interrogation room 2. Milliardo balled his fists when he noticed their clothes were disheveled and especially WuFei looked flustered and upset.

"What, in the Hell, happened?" He demanded, glaring at them both.

Barton explained: "I came to check on them, as you asked, and found them both on the floor trying to choke the life out of each other. I had to physically force them apart."

WuFei grunted and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "He lunged at me."

"Jesus Christ." He pointed an angry finger at the Chinese man. "I just assured the chief that we would handle this case in a professional manner. Goddammit." He turned around and took a few steps to distance himself from them. Taking a deep breath he composed himself and waited for his hands to stop shaking. He couldn't afford to have the team fall apart at this juncture. Yuy's life depended on them, as did Duo's. Confident his panic and concern wouldn't show, he faced his team members again. "Chang, did you ask Duo what his explanation was for the half-hour gap?"

He replied curtly: "He said he left the motel at a quarter to two, drove straight to the gas station, but sat in the car for a while trying to compose himself before going in for water and smokes."

"Good, okay, that's something. I'm going to take over the interrogation. Chang, you take a moment to calm yourself and then go through Duo's caller-history and financial records. Start with his cellphone records, to rule out that he called anyone for help from the parking lot at the motel. Trowa and I had figured that if he's innocent, he is still the clue to finding the people responsible and finding Yuy. Keep me in the loop about every little thing. Oh and call Forensics, have them send a team to the parking garage to search Duo's Jeep."

WuFei nodded and left in an instant.

Trowa gave him a questioning look.

"We have to cover our bases. I'm not saying we'll find anything, but we have to thorough. I know we want to exonerate Duo but we agree that the most important thing is finding Yuy, right?"

"Yes, sir," He agreed readily.

"You go do what I was planning to do: go to Duo's apartment and the gas station. Go to the gas station first and try to find out if there is a way to confirm that Duo arrived there at about five to two. Text me if you find anything."

The agent gave a nod and then walked away with long strides.

Milliardo released a deep breath and stared at the door to the interrogation room. He was apprehensive about stepping in there, which was novel to him. Interrogation was his strong suit, he had never felt out of his depth trying to get the truth out of a suspect, but no suspect was like Duo. As a former undercover agent, deceit came naturally and easily to him, that much had been proven, but on top of that, him and Duo had been working together for so long that Duo knew all his tricks, so he wouldn't be falling for any of them. He was left without an inkling on how to approach this particular suspect.

Before going in he headed for the watercooler down the hall. He produced the single strip of Ibuprofen he had stuffed in his pocket in case of a headache-emergency – he expected this case would be more than just a pain in the ass – and he swallowed a pill and washed it down with plenty of water. With the casefile under his arm, both hands were free and he carried two cups of water to the interrogation room. He nudged the door open with his hip and pretended to be unaffected by the state in which he found Duo.

The man sat slumped in 'the chair at the other side of the table'. His entire body seemed deflated. He had taken off his jacket and the shirt he wore underneath showed signs of the struggle he had had with WuFei; it had been untucked from his black slacks, it missed the top two buttons and the seams at his shoulders had torn. His face was deathly pale, offset by his eyes which were darker than Milliardo had ever seen them. His hands were on the table, limp, the knuckles of his right hand were freshly bruised from pummeling WuFei.

Milliardo took a seat across from him and wordlessly offered him one of the cups of water. "Well done," He bit sarcastically. Even though he pitied his team member, he knew better than to go easy on him. They had no more time to spare feelings or play games. If some other guy was out there, holding Yuy, they would have to move fast. "On the day you become a suspect, you decide to finally fight out that beef with Chang."

Everyone in the office knew that Maxwell and Chang didn't get along, making Chang the only person to openly dislike Duo, which didn't make him very popular. It was nothing personal, but their entirely different work-ethics didn't play well together. Chang was all about following the rules and sticking to protocol. Duo mocked this approach, his forte lay in bending – or even blatantly breaking – the rules, manipulating people into spilling the truth, threatening suspects and faking evidence to force a confession. Figuratively speaking Chang and Duo had butted heads many times before, arguing one method in favor of the other. There had always been tension between them and the situation had apparently caused them both to explode.

"He got on my nerves," Duo simply said, through gritted teeth.

"You lie to one agent and you fight with another," Milliardo shook his head in disproval. "How are we supposed to work this case if you keep getting in the way of the truth?"

"It's like I told Chang," He said the name like it was an insult in and of itself, "You're wasting your time with me. I didn't do anything. I'm not involved. You should be looking for Heero, not asking me stupid questions!" He slammed his fists onto the table and the water jumped up out of both cups and spilled over the side.

"You are our only lead, Duo. Whether or not you are guilty, we have to act on the information that we have and follow the trail as it appears before us. Right now, that is the trail you have blazoned."

"Then you're being led astray! This approach is only going to lead you further away from actually finding Heero!"

"If you are innocent," Milliardo emphasized the first word, "It is a reasonable assumption that whoever took Yuy, took him to get at you. Innocent or not, you are the key to finding out what happened."

"You should be looking into that John Doe. He's the clue! He's the accomplice to whoever has Heero!" He sat back and stubbornly crossed his arms in front of his chest. Looking off to the side, he declared: "I'm not talking to you. I'm not talking to any of you and let you waste your time on looking into me."

"Duo, you need to talk to me."

"No," He shook his head petulantly. "I'm lawyering-up. I'm not saying anything until I get a lawyer in here. In the meantime you can go out and actually look for Heero."

It was Milliardo's turn to slam his hand onto the table to get Duo to look at him and to take him seriously and he made it clear in no uncertain terms that – as is always the case – lawyering-up is only going to hamper the progress of the investigation. Not to mention that his lack of cooperation would only make Duo look all the more guilty. "If you didn't do this and you want us to find Heero alive, we are your best friends. Because if you tell us your side of the story we might be able to prove your innocence and in the process find the person who is responsible and hunt them down to get Heero back safely."

Duo stared at him. On the surface he was defiant, but underneath that unyielding layer was a depth filled with vulnerability and fear.

"You want that, right? You want Heero to be safe?" He observed his reaction closely.

"Yes. Fuck, of course I do," Duo answered. His voice wavered.

"Tell me the whole story, Duo."


	2. Chapter 2

**Blue Divide**

_**Part 2** _

Duo had been living a life of secrets and emotional isolation since he was only a young boy. He first realized he was different from all the other kids, in a way no one could understand nor accept, when he was placed into the foster care of a nice enough family; a father in a business-suit, a stay-at-home mom and a son his age who was on the soccer team of the school they made Duo attend as well. He was eleven and the other boy was twelve. They played together at home and Duo joined the soccer team. That foster family was nice and in that regard they were nothing like the homes he had been placed in before.

He liked the boy more than he had ever liked anybody. He enjoyed playing with him and talking with him. He never wanted to spend any time with anybody else. The boy was kind and sweet. He was special to Duo.

If he had grown up as a normal kid, in a steady household, perhaps he would have known better, but when he realized his feelings for the boy encompassed much more than friendship, he didn't think of this as odd. He wasn't ashamed and he wasn't scared. He didn't know that he should have been.

He told the boy how he felt and after that he kissed him, on the mouth and the boy kissed him back.

His feelings for the boy became stronger than ever and for the first time he suspected he was happy. For weeks to come they continued to play together in their rooms and on the soccer field. Sometimes they would kiss and touch each other where it felt good.

When, one day, the father of the household walked in on them, everything changed. The big man grabbed him by his upper arm – so painfully Duo was reminded of his own father – and he dragged him out of the boy's bedroom. Downstairs he proceeded to slap Duo across the cheek and with an accusing finger pointed at him he made sure, in a loud, almost shouting tone of voice, that Duo understood how wrong and sick it had been of him to kiss another boy.

The family suspected Duo had forced himself on their son and they were abhorred by how he had disrespected their hospitality with his brutish, perverted behavior. Once the mother was done cussing him out to avenge her son's besmirched innocence, the father brought him back to child services and he told them Duo had sexually assaulted their son.

There were no more foster homes after that. Duo grew up in two all-boy orphanages. In the first orphanage he made the mistake of telling the other boys that he had been in love with the son of his last foster family. The big boys beat him badly, regularly. Everyone would call him names and no one would play with him. When the violence escalated, the caretakers had decided to transfer him to a different orphanage and they strongly advised him not to tell anyone that he had kissed another boy, or else the same punishment from his peers awaited him.

And so his double life started when he was thirteen years old and he had to bottle up his feelings to protect himself. He fell in love with a couple more boys during his teenage years but he knew better than to act on those feelings. If anyone would find out what he truly was, he knew he would be persecuted.

After a few years he stopped falling in love with anybody and he started to excel at the deceit. Lying was a gateway to a youth of theft and violence, but he never got caught, because he was too good at it, although he would never be proud of that.

As he grew older and ashamed of the choices that had defined him, all he aspired to be was a police officer; to be one of the good guys, to distance himself from his roots and his past and prove to himself – and anyone else – that he was better than that.

He graduated from the academy at the top of his class and became a police officer and then soon made it into the undercover squad because he was so good at pretending to be someone he was not. Nobody realized that he was that good because he was always pretending. He was always hiding his true self.

He resented his time in the undercover narcotics division, even though he should have been grateful for the swift, upward career move. He wanted to be one of the good guys, but instead had to pretend to be the exact thing he rejected, and most days he felt like a crook pretending to a cop, not the other way around. At least the undercover assignments allowed him to keep his colleagues at arm's length. As had been true his entire life, it was important to keep his sexuality a secret.

Even as an adult he feared the consequences of coming out. He knew he likely would not suffer physical abuse, as he had in the past, but as a police officer your career depends, in large parts, on the grace of the superiors; the old guard, senior agents whose homophobia trickled down all ranks. It takes a certain kind of person to become a police officer. The machismo that they all shared – even the women - left most susceptible to a hatred of those they perceived as less tough, less virile and less strong.

Duo had seen up close what it would do to an officer's career even if he was only suspected of homosexuality. The man didn't get that long-deserved promotion and his team treated him differently. The man was being scrutinized and his possibly deviant sexuality was blamed for his every flaw – if he wrongly filed a case folder, if he spilled coffee on his shirt, if he missed during target practice, if a suspect outran him… it was all 'because he was gay'. The tension between the team erupted into a physical fight and after being released from the hospital, the man was reassigned and put into a dead-end function, supposedly for his own well-being.

Duo had long decided that fate would not befall him, he wouldn't let it. He was too ambitious and too committed. All he wanted was to be a cop and put away criminals that deserved to rot, like his own father. Every time he got some piece of shit locked up, he felt like he was getting rid of another part of himself that was too much like his father. The parts that, if left unchecked, would fester and devolve like his father did. It was a cathartic process. He wasn't going to let the curse of his sexuality stand in the way of that.

He was friendly to everyone, to avoid anyone making up rumors or dig up dirt on him out of spite, but he never actually befriended any of them. Even the most superficially personal detail of his life felt like leaving the door open for people to discover the skeletons in his dark closet. No one ever realized it was a show of smoke and mirrors; smiles, jokes and birthday cards.

He satisfied his basic urges with casual sexual encounters with strangers – not even exclusively men – and there was never any intimacy with them, because he couldn't risk it. Sex with intimacy leads to a relationship, lovers become boyfriends and boyfriends want to meet your 'friends' and accompany you to the station's New Year's party. It was a slippery slope he avoided carefully.

When the loneliness crept in, he had started drinking. Just a little bit to take the edge off his self-loathing and headache-inducing paranoia and for a while that helped. But soon he had to drink more and more to achieve the same results. He was never in denial about his addiction or the potentially devastating effect it could have on the career he had been protecting so dutifully all those years, but he had no one to reach out to for help and all he could do to numb that heartache was to drink more. The drinking didn't help his temper. It was a struggle to maintain that friendly façade in a manner that would make no one curious enough to ever look behind the mask. Sometimes, he would snap, but luckily he never betrayed his secret.

Milliardo called him to his office one day and urged him to be honest. He said: "I know."

Duo's initial fear had been that Milliardo had somehow found out about his homosexuality, but it quickly became clear his boss had only become aware of his drinking problem and he had been relieved.

Milliardo graciously offered help, he encouraged Duo to talk to him or talk to the station's counsellor, Sally Po. But he couldn't open up to either of them. Milliardo was his boss and Sally was WuFei's longtime girlfriend that had everybody wondering: 'When the Hell is Chang going to pop the question?'. He was too distrusting to open up to anyone.

Duo was grateful when he had to go undercover for an investigation. It meant Milliardo would have to get off his back for the time being. But the environment that he had to put himself in caused his drinking to worsen and a sense of despair grew within him to an unmanageable size and insufferable sharp, jagged shape. The fear that he would end up ruining his career and falling further into that void of loneliness, consumed him.

One night, very drunk and feeling very sorry for himself, Duo called the suicide prevention hotline.

And Heero Yuy answered.

"I don't know why I'm calling," He said sheepishly. "I'm not suicidal. I don't think so, anyway."

Heero was nice, patient and understanding. Of course he was, he wouldn't be working at the hotline otherwise.

"I don't really have anything I want to say. I don't want to talk about my problems, or whatever…" Duo continued on in a manner betraying his confusion and insecurity. "I was feeling lonely."

"We don't have to talk about problems. We can talk about anything, or not talk at all."

"I don't want to talk," He said. He was inebriated and uninhibited. He worried that even if they would simply talk about the weather he would end up telling this stranger his entire sob-story of a life.

"That's okay. Do you want me to just stay on the line with you?"

The offer surprised Duo. Calling and talking seemed so irreversibly linked, it was weird to him to be on the phone with someone and not speak, after all, that was the entire purpose of a phone call. Yet, the offer intrigued him and he wondered if it would help him feel less alone. "Sure."

"Okay. I'm here for you," He said and then he became quiet.

Duo stared across his living room, shaking his head at himself. This was crazy, wasn't it? But for whatever reason, he didn't want to hang up. He frowned when he heard a particular sound from the other end of the line. It took him a moment until he recognized it. He kept quiet for a few minutes but then he could not contain his curiosity. "Are you typing?"

"Yes."

Somehow Duo could tell the man was smiling. "What are you writing?" Was it about him? Was he psycho-analyzing him through his silence?

"Code."

"Code?" He raised his eyebrows. "You're a programmer."

"Yes. Sort of. I fix people's computers. I work from home and I also do the hotline from home."

"Short commute," He joked.

Heero chuckled. "Very. And every day is casual Friday."

Duo laughed. "What does casual Friday look like when you work from home? Bathrobe and slippers?"

"Sometimes."

Duo was amused by the thought. He tried to imagine what the man looked like. He envisioned a big, heavy-set man, and hairy probably, an image based on prejudice. Whatever he looked like, he had a nice voice; deep and vibrating, it was soothing. And the pacing of his words was rhythmic and the way the words blended together sounded almost melodious. It didn't matter much to him who he was and what he might look like, he wanted to hear more of that voice, so he agreed to a conversation.

Over the course of several calls – first via the hotline and then later Heero provided him with his home-number – he learned more about Heero Yuy and he even allowed the other to learn things about him, until eventually he realized, one day, that he had told Heero everything, and it didn't scare him. The anonymity of not being seen, of not 'really' knowing each other, made him feel secure enough to reveal things about himself that he had never told anyone. And Heero always knew what to say, or rather, when to say nothing. There was no judgment – not even in the form of well-intended but misguided advise - , only understanding; an understanding of the loneliness and the struggle. For the first time he felt like had actually made a friend, like there was someone out there in the world who knew the ugliest truths about him and still accepted him.

Whenever he talked to Heero, he didn't feel like drinking and this made him feel hopeful that there was a way for him to quit his addiction; a hope that wasn't there before. It was thanks to this spark of hope that he agreed with Milliardo that he should go to rehab. Getting injured during the shoot-out was the perfect excuse to be out of the field long enough to enable a recovery from his addiction.

The facility was nice and the doctors and counsellors did their job well, but the person who kept him from walking out the door during the toughest moments, was the man on the other end of the line; his only friend. A man he had never met. He realized how silly it was that he had no idea what his only friend looked like. There were no secrets between them and yet there was the distance of not knowing what the other looked like. He wanted to see the smile that accompanied that rumbling laughter at their shared, off-beat humor. And, more than anything, he wanted to see Heero's eyes, to see the understanding that he had only ever heard before, through the phone line. On a whim he made a call to the office and he asked Hilde for a favor; to track down Heero's address using his home phone number. She happily located the house for him and without thinking he signed out of rehab for the evening, promising to come back.

The house he ended up standing in front of was small and quaint. The paint on the paneling had faded to a dusty, pale shade of blue. The garden was wild and unkempt. The roots of a tree in front had pushed up some of the stepping stones that made up the path heading to the front porch. In every room of the house the lights were on but thin curtains obstructed a clear view into the home.

He knew it was crazy to show up unannounced like that, but no more crazy than not formally introducing himself to the person who may very well one day be accredited to saving his life from a deadly, all-consuming addiction. He went up to the front door and after a deep breath, he knocked.

It took a moment before the door was answered. With a creak the door was slowly opened and Duo marveled at the sight before him. Dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting sweater was a young and remarkably attractive man. His face was an exotic contradiction of a small, delicate nose, soft lips and big eyes and thick, masculine eyebrows, high cut cheekbones and a sharply defined jawline. The golden glow of his complexion and the upward slant of his eyes suggested an Asian heritage that was belied by the cobalt blue shade of his eyes.

He realized he had been staring, the man regarded him with apparent confusion, and he smiled stupidly. "Heero Yuy?"

One of those dark eyebrows quirked at the sound of his voice but it was evident Heero couldn't place him yet. "Yes?"

It only then dawned on him that Heero couldn't have any idea who he was. He reached out his hand and introduced himself: "I'm Duo Maxwell."

Those eyes widened. "Duo…" He looked him up and down. "I-… What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to meet you. For real. Can I come in?"

Heero wrapped his arms around himself and looked over his shoulder self-consciously. "I wasn't expecting guests."

"It's okay, I don't mind a bit of mess. Or, if you want me to leave…?"

"No, not at all." Heero chewed on his bottom lip momentarily and Duo was distracted by the sight. "I guess it's okay. Don't judge, okay?" He stepped aside and held the door open for Duo, inviting him into his home.

Duo humbly stepped over the threshold and he appraised the surroundings while Heero shut the door behind him. At first glance he didn't understand Heero's embarrassment, the place was spotless and well-organized, but upon closer inspection he noticed the desk with several computers, the rows upon rows of books, movies and CD's, various collections of knickknacks, a treadmill in the study – while the park was only about a block away - and the intensely 'lived-in' feel of the place. The dead give-away was that there was only one barstool at the kitchen counter, one desk chair, one chair at the small dining table and one lounge chair in front of the television set. It was the home of a recluse, someone who spent all his time alone in his private sanctuary and it was Duo witnessing the testament of this lifestyle that caused Heero embarrassment.

"I don't really expect any guests ever," Heero explained sheepishly as he must have watched Duo's gaze bounce around the room.

"You have a nice home," He said and he offered him a warm smile. Even though Duo's apartment looked very different – with more than enough chairs for elaborate dinner parties – his home might as well have looked exactly like that. He was also always alone.

Heero nodded and tried to hide his blush and rolled the desk chair to the petit dinner table. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, thank you." He took a seat at the table and watched the younger man set to work, pouring hot coffee into two mismatched cups.

He put the coffee on the table along with a jar of sugar and apologized for not having any coffee milk but as it turned out they both preferred their coffee black and strong.

The conversation was slow and awkward at first. Heero's appearance didn't match Duo's expectations and he presumed the same was true for Heero and it threw them both off. But then Duo reminded himself to focus on Heero's voice, which sounded familiar but even better in person and talking to him became easy again and his ease and familiarity was reflected in Heero's demeanor.

It was around midnight when Duo caught on that Heero was being flirty with him. It was a shy, understated kind of flirtatious behavior, very different from the overt sexual advances he was used to when meeting men at bars and clubs, which was why he missed it at first. He knew Heero was gay, the man had candidly shared this with him after he himself confessed the nature of his sexuality during one of their extended phone conversations. He had never considered acting on this knowledge, but he never realized how irresistibly attractive the other was.

He waited for Heero to lightly touch his forearm again as he laughed at one of his anecdotes and he responded to it the only way he knew how. Duo fell silent and shot up from his seat suddenly. Heero mirrored him, he stood and stared at him with confused eyes, wondering what he had done wrong. Duo bodily pushed him back against the wall and fused their lips together in a desperate kiss.

The shorter man's shock quickly made way for compliance. He brought his arms up around Duo's shoulders and pushed his hips off the wall and against Duo's when the kiss deepened and intensified.

The abrupt turn of events overwhelmed Heero, which was possibly why he never made any objections, he was not given time to think or second-guess their actions before Duo helped him out of his sweater and let his big hands explore the sensitivity of his nipples and the ticklishness of his sides.

Duo's shirt joined Heero's on the floor and shortly after that both their jeans were pooled around their ankles.

"Do you want me to fuck you?" Duo whispered breathily in his ear. He trusted that the obvious insinuation that Duo wanted to fuck him needn't be spoken out loud. He knew the matter of top versus bottom wouldn't be an issue, their preferences had already been disclosed during one of their hours-long phone calls. Duo still remembered getting hard hearing Heero describe himself, in that vibrating voice of his – with the slightest hint of embarrassment -, as a 'total bottom', even though he still imagined the Japanese man overweight and hairy at that point.

Heero moaned. "Yes… Ah! Nnnn. But I don't have any condoms."

The American growled but accepted that he would have to wait. "Next time, then," He asserted and he freed their matching erections from their underwear and lined them up and started stroking them together.

They soon reached their climax, in near unison, and Duo waited for both their heartrates to slow before he dressed himself.

Heero followed suit.

The agent realized he had made a terrible mistake when he reminded himself that having a relationship was too big of a risk. Having a boyfriend would make it much more likely that others would find out about his homosexuality. An innocent phone call to his desk phone and an inappropriate joke from a co-worker would be enough to fuel rumors and cause the kind of trouble he had painstakingly avoided since he was just a kid growing up in a hostile orphanage.

A panic came over him and he announced that he had to go back to the rehab facility, it was already late. He could see the insecurity written across Heero's face, but he didn't know how to soothe him.

He left and drove straight back to rehab. When the exit came up, he felt his own foot putting more pressure on the gas pedal without his conscious control and he nearly missed the exit that led back to Golden Horizons and keep going for a gas station where they sold his favorite brand of bourbon. He shook his head and took the exit. When his hands moved around on the steering wheel, the sweaty palms left wet marks on the leather.

He could either have a friendly relationship with Heero, or a sexual relationship. A combination of both would be too real, too intimate and too close for comfort. Maybe if he hadn't already been struggling to quit his drinking habit, he would have had the wisdom to recognize Heero was a better influence on his life as a friend and he would have had the self-discipline to act on that wisdom. But the truth was that he had no self-discipline to spare, not as he missed the burn of alcohol in the back of his throat that leveled everything. Since he had gotten a taste of Heero, he wanted more. He wanted it more than he wanted a drink.

So, selfishly, he made the decision that, moving forward from then on, their relationship would become purely physical. Heero made no apparent objection to this autocratic decision and eagerly agreed to start meeting up at the motel, as opposed to either of their homes. The fact that Duo lived in Harrisburg, close to the police station, while Heero lived in Philadelphia, meaning they lived about an hour and forty minutes apart, served as a perfect excuse to choose the motel as a meeting-point halfway. But for Duo it wasn't about a shorter drive. The motel was a way to reestablish a measure of distance between them, the setting naturally prevented matters from becoming too intimate and personal and Heero seemed to recognize and accept the stipulations and limitations of what was being offered to him.

The first time they had sex in the motel room, Duo was rough with him – as he always was, before and after -, it was what they both wanted. Heero took hold of the headboard and between his cries and moans he begged for Duo to fuck him harder and deeper. Duo knew that it had been a while for Heero since he had last engaged in sex, but he didn't say anything about it. They both lost themselves to the sensations and when it was over – far too soon – Duo acknowledged he had a new addiction.

As they met up regularly for sex, Heero's shy demeanor developed into a more confidant attitude. Duo's evident need and desire built-up his self-esteem and self-awareness.

For a while, everything was perfect. The sex was the best he had ever had. Heero was the most beautiful guy he had ever seen and the younger man – by as little as three years - certainly started dressing himself in clothes that enhanced that. Duo never stayed long after getting them both off. That was the point. They would talk only briefly, before or after their physical exertion, and they did share a candy-bar and a Mountain Dew once or twice afterwards. Or a smoke, even though it was obviously Heero wasn't a smoker, he just wanted Duo to stay. But Duo never spent the night, he was adamant about that, because during those short moments of quiet conversation and remembering the long talks they had shared on the phone, Duo knew he could easily fall in love with Heero and that was not something he planned to let happen.

He had to be harsh when Heero first hinted that he wanted more.

The Asian male climbed out of the bed, disentangling himself from the messed-up sheets. Duo still lay in bed, catching his breath. With greedy eyes he watched Heero move. He enjoyed seeing the muscles flex and stretch under that soft, golden skin that glistened with a sheen of sweat.

Heero located his jeans and worked on putting them on. He didn't bother with his underwear, Duo had ruined his briefs when he literally tore them off his body shortly before.

"In a hurry?" Duo teased. Normally Heero was all too happy to lay flush against him and play with Duo's long hair or draw shapes on his chest absentmindedly until it was Duo who decided he had to head home.

"I thought you should know what it feels like being the one walked out on," He shot back with a smirk.

"Hmm… It's no good," Duo commented, following the movement of Heero's nimble fingers as he buttoned up his jeans. When the other man searched the room for his shirt, it was Duo's turn to grin and inconspicuously he pulled the article of clothing that lay beside his pillow underneath the sheets, hiding it from Heero.

"Have you seen my shirt?"

"Not since I took it off you." With a mischievous look in his eyes he crawled to the foot of the bed, where Heero stood, and he put his big hands on the man's slim hips. Duo touched his nose to the smooth, hard planes of his abdomen and let his tongue dart out to taste the drying sweat on his skin.

"What are you doing?" Heero wondered, bemused.

"Round two." Without warning he jerked Heero forward, having him fall onto the bed beside him and he wasted no time climbing on top of him and capturing his mouth in a deep, demanding kiss.

Heero responded favorably, as he always did and he was more than happy to help Duo get him out of those tight jeans again.

Duo effortlessly flipped Heero onto his stomach and had him angle his pelvis so he could push his erection into his warm body again, once he had put another condom onto himself. The passage was still slick and open from their previous go-round and Duo marveled at how he was welcomed inside.

Heero gripped the sheets and moaned into the mattress. "Ohhh, you're so big…"

"I didn't hear you complain before," Duo breathed against his neck and he started thrusting.

"I'm not complaining… Feels good! Ah!"

He fucked him hard, intent on bringing them both to a swift orgasm, until Heero said: "I want to ride you."

He was hardly about to object to that. He pulled out and maneuvered around Heero to lay on his back on the bed. His lover straddled him and reached behind him to guide Duo's erection back inside him. They moaned in unison when Heero rolled his hips. Duo stroked his hands up and down the toned thighs, occasionally reaching out to grant Heero's arousal a couple of pumps of his tight fist. When Heero was taking things too slow for his liking he grabbed him by his ass and started moving his own hips off the mattress. The Japanese man jerked himself off and found his release first, spilling his come on Duo's abdomen, which made Heero smirk. After Duo had climaxed the younger man rolled off him and helpfully rid him of the condom and cleaned off his stomach and chest with a towel that he had placed by the bed.

Once Duo felt confident his legs were strong enough to stand on and he wouldn't simply keel over, he got up on his feet and dressed quickly. He was working on the last few buttons of his shirt when he caught Heero saying softly:

"Please stay."

Trying to brush it off, he joked: "I'm not up for a third round."

"Just spend the night with me. Sleep next to me," Heero said, turning to lay on his side and avoiding eye-contact in the hope that Duo wouldn't catch the vulnerable expression. "We can have round three tomorrow morning."

"This is just about sex, Heero, I don't want anything else," He said bluntly. He tried not to sound mean, but given his harsh words that was pretty much unavoidable. He feared Heero wouldn't let it go, that he would demand more, that he would demand the things Duo wasn't comfortable giving. A heat grabbed at him, it flushed his chest and caused his throat to constrict.

But Heero didn't argue. He accepted the rejection, without ever even glancing up at him. He stared down at the sheets, where his fingers toyed with a fold and he simply said: "Okay."

Although Duo was relieved, he felt like an unbelievable asshole and he also predicted Heero's agreement wasn't as final as the singular word had made it sound. The issue would be brought up again, he feared.

From then on, Heero's dissatisfaction with the arrangement hung in the air, unspoken but felt. It was apparent in the way he pressed himself close to Duo's naked body in the aftermath and the empty look in his eyes whenever Duo got up and left. No matter how hard and often Duo made him come, screaming his name, Heero was never fully satisfied, but they both ignored it for as long as they could stand it.

Many times Duo was tempted to stay, to spend the night in the motel room and hold Heero's warm body close to him and stroke his fingers through his soft, wild hair. But he knew that if he would, he would be lost. He would step into the unknown and he would risk everything for a relationship that he didn't even know would last. He had never had a normal, serious relationship; a calculated decision that had, admittedly, stagnated his emotional and social development, which left him appropriately unsuitable for a relationship – or maybe that was just the excuse he fed himself whenever he got scared that he was missing out.

Yet those nights, after Heero's body had gifted him the most intense pleasure, a part of him yearned to know what it would feel like to wake up with the younger man in his arms and to make love at dawn, unhurried and honest, with nowhere else to be and no secrets to keep. It was a fantasy he allowed to occupy his thoughts for only a few minutes before he would get out of bed each time and leave Heero behind.

Arriving at the motel parking lot one night, Duo glanced down at his watch and cursed at the time. They had agreed to meet at eleven, but it was nearly midnight. He had been out of rehab for about a month but he still had to attend AA meetings regularly and he had been at a meeting which ran long when one of the housewives had a nervous breakdown at the last minute, retelling one of her experiences. It wasn't unusual that Heero would have to wait for him, but that didn't mean Duo didn't feel guilty about it.

On his way to the door of room 102 he fished the key out of his jacket pocket and he fumbled on the first attempt to insert it into the lock. His hands were unsteady with excitement. The Japanese male had that effect on him.

He succeeded in opening the door and he grinned at the sight that greeted him.

Heero lay on his stomach on top of the sheets, his legs bent at the knee, his feet kicked up and playfully swinging back and forth. He had taken off his jeans to get comfortable and had draped them over the foot of the bed, but he had left on his black boxer briefs and white button-up shirt because he knew Duo enjoyed undressing him. Duo had once explained to him that it was like unwrapping a present.

Heero had been killing time, entertaining himself with reading an e-book on his cell phone, and he ignored Duo for a few moments before finally looking up at him with a sparkle of mischief. He knew very well what the sight of him lying on that bed did to his greedy lover. His button-up shirt was hiked up to expose the small of his back and his briefs had ridden up between the ass cheeks, partly baring them for Duo to see.

The condoms and lube already lay within reach, by the pillow.

The American slammed the door shut and made quick work of undoing his tie and stripping out of his jacket and shirt.

Heero watched him move across the room. His feet stilled and he lowered them onto the mattress. His legs were spread ever so slightly, inviting Duo to crawl on top of him.

Duo did exactly that. With his tie still in one hand he climbed over the foot of the bed and on top of Heero, nudging his legs further apart with his knees. His long braid snaked over his shoulder and fell onto Heero's back. Duo rested his weight on him and grinded the growing bulge between his legs against his shapely behind.

Heero groaned and wantonly pushed back against him. When Duo was fully erect the shape of his cock lined up with the crevice of Heero's ass and they both moaned at the friction created by their clothes and the heat that radiated through the fabric.

Impatient as ever, Duo got up on his knees and turned Heero over beneath him. He took gentle hold of Heero's hands and pinned them to the pillow above his head. He draped his black tie across the wrists, not actually tying him up, but wordlessly letting him know that he wanted him to keep his arms up. Heero's eyes darkened and he watched his lover with apparent lust.

The agent let his fingers ghost over the other's stomach and up to his chest, pushing the shirt up with the feather light touch. He lowered his mouth to his chest and licked at a nipple that perked up in the air-conditioned chill of the room.

"Ohhh…" Heero arched his back and threw his head back. He fought to keep his arms and legs still but he couldn't help but squirm as Duo moved his mouth to the other nipple while he kept stimulating it's wetted twin with his fingers. He licked his lips and said: "Tie me up for real."

Duo couldn't help but look up in surprise, yet he was instantly intrigued and aroused by the idea. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," He practically squeaked. "Tie me up and fuck me hard."

Duo growled and hoisted Heero a little further up the bed so his hands reached the headboard. Using the tie he tied Heero's left wrist, looped the loose end through the cut-out shapes of the headboard and then tied his right wrist with the other end.

Heero pulled to test the knot and he bit his lower lip when he discovered he couldn't free himself.

Duo's hands dragged down Heero's arms and he watched goosebumps spread over Heero's skin. He kissed him for the first time that evening. A fire spread through him at the comfort and ease with which Heero submitted to his dominance. He moved his hands to the heaving chest and plucked at both nipples, drinking up the small sounds Heero made in response.

Eager to move it along and get to his present, Duo sat upright between Heero's spread legs and he undid every button of his shirt, maintaining heated eye-contact the entire time. He pushed away the sides of the shirt once the last button was released and then crawled down his body and rid Heero of his underwear. He slowly dragged the briefs down the length of his toned, golden legs, letting the fabric caress his skin.

Heero mewled pathetically at being subjected to such sweet torment. His erection curved back towards his belly button and twitched in response to Duo's ministrations.

"Fuck…" Duo groaned, appraising his lover. "You're so beautiful." He realized how sappy and unintentionally romantic that sounded, so he amended: "You're the hottest thing I've ever laid eyes on."

"I want you to lay more on me that just your eyes," He said. "Touch me."

Duo unzipped his pants and lowered them down to mid-thigh and gave himself a few tugs, then hooked his hands under Heero's knees and pushed his legs up and back. He kissed his way down the inside of his thigh, letting his lips brush across the soft, sensitive skin. When he reached his groin he flicked his tongue along the head of the erection just once and then he looked up at Heero with mischief in his eyes and said: "Beg for it."

Heero didn't hesitate. While shamelessly moving his hips off the mattress, trying to get his arousal closer to Duo's hot mouth again, he begged without inhibition: "Please. Please! Put your mouth on me."

Duo wouldn't have been able to resist anyway. He dragged his tongue up the entire length of the shaft and then took him onto his mouth. With a strong grip on Heero's legs he prevented the man from thrusting his hips up while he sucked him off. When he could tell Heero was close to reaching his climax he let go with a pop.

"You're turn," Duo said. He crawled up the prone body and straddled Heero's chest. With his thumb he spread the bead of pre-come over the crown of his penis and then rubbed the wetted head against one of Heero's pert nipples. When Heero licked his lips, Duo sat up and leaned his pelvis forward, bringing his erection within reach of the other's mouth. Heero pushed his head off the pillow and eagerly wrapped his lips around him and teased him with the pressure of his tongue and the heat and wetness of his mouth. Duo gripped the top of the headboard tightly with one hand, while the other supported the back of Heero's neck.

Not able to wait any longer to claim his ultimate prize, he grabbed the lube and a condom and positioned himself between Heero's wantonly spread legs again. He stared lustfully at Heero with hooded eyes as the other watched him put on the protective latex. Duo stroked himself a couple of times to coat his arousal with plenty of lube.

When he was ready he hoisted Heero's legs over his shoulders and leaned forward until Heero's knees nearly touched his own chest. "Is this what you want?" He pressed the blunt head of his erection against the opening.

"Ah! Yes!"

He locked gazes with him and slowly entered him, letting him enjoy the stretch and the fullness, knowing it was his second favorite part; second only to reaching his climax with Duo inside him, his muscles clenching around his thickness. Before he started in on that primal rhythm he kissed the Asian male lengthily; a shallow, open-mouthed kiss, their tongues barely meeting between hot gasps for air.

He started to pound into him, so forcefully that the movements shook the bed and the top of the headboard swayed enough to bang against the wall with every thrust. He didn't care. Besides, neither of them could stay quiet anyway, he was certain their cries could be heard in the neighboring rooms and outside as well, so they might as well hear the headboard hit the wall. The motel wasn't known for its peace and quiet anyway. Guests didn't really come there to go hiking in French Creek Park, they weren't interested in wildlife, all they cared about was living wild. The motel had a reputation for hosting sex parties and for being a haven for gay men looking for casual, anonymous sex, with drug-use being a big part of the overall experience. These were not the kind of men to mind hearing them have sex. They'd probably enjoy it.

Duo was aware that violent crimes had taken place at the motel in the past. That was just the kind of place it was. Yet he felt safe here because he knew he wouldn't accidentally run into a colleague or anyone familiar. People who weren't part of the more seedy gay lifestyle avoided this place like the plague. Which meant he was free to shamefully fuck Heero, making him scream his name out loud.

He sat upright and after placing a kiss on Heero's calf he let him lower his legs to wrap them around his torso. His brutal pace didn't relent until Heero tightened his legs around his midsection, nearly immobilizing him.

"Kiss me," He breathed.

His lips looked too good to be denied, so Duo dropped down and connected their mouths again. With Heero's strong legs dictating Duo's pace he didn't allow him to do much more than slowly move in and out of him, tightening and relaxing his legs to facilitate this unfamiliar rhythm. It felt good, so Duo played along until it all started to feel a bit too intimate to him. It resembled love-making more than anything he had ever done and he hadn't agreed to that. He released Heero's lips, but not before biting on the lower lip, and sat up on his knees again. With a strong grip he pried Heero's legs off him and he turned him around roughly.

The tie around Heero's wrists twisted and Heero yelped at the fabric digging into his skin, but he made no other objections. He knew he had been caught trying to force something that Duo wouldn't allow and he accepted the roughness as his punishment.

Duo dug his fingers into the wild, chocolate brown hair of his lover and pulled. He whispered in his ear: "Do you want my cock back inside you?"

"Yes." To further express his need Heero pushed his ass off the mattress, against Duo's arousal.

He let go of his hair and used both hands to take hold of Heero's hips and lifted them up, raising his ass up nice and high. He resisted thrusting into him for as long as he could, enjoying his lover's obvious need. He rubbed the blunt head of his erection between the cleft teasingly and nudged it against his perineum and ball sac. Finally, he easily slipped back inside him and the channel clenched and unclenched around him.

Heero cried out to show how much he enjoyed the intrusion.

The American couldn't stay the inevitable any longer. He snapped his pelvis mercilessly, working his length into him at a pace that would ensure neither of them would last for long.

Heero pulled on his bonds, the fabric was starting to tear but he could not or would not free his hands. "Please, Duo, make me come with you!"

Heeding his request he took one hand off the creamy soft hip and with his fist he formed a tunnel around Heero's manhood that he pumped up and down the length in a rhythm that matched his thrusts. When Heero's impending orgasm made him tighten his muscles around Duo's cock, Duo returned the favor and squeezed his lover tighter with his fist.

They both cried out and shouted each other's name. No more than a second after he felt the first wave of semen spill onto his hand, Duo came, snarling a curse word, and he pumped the condom full with his release.

Completely spent he let go of Heero's flesh where his fingers had left the beginnings of bruises and Heero's hips fell down onto the mattress. He carefully peeled the condom off his softening member and after tying a knot in the end he chucked it towards the trash bin in the corner and felt a distant sense of pride when he hit his mark. Duo kicked away his pants and sprawled himself out on the bed, on his back, next to Heero.

The younger man lay with his face buried into the pillow and his back moving up and down sharply with his breaths.

Duo remembered he was still tied up, so he rolled onto his side and after a short while he managed to undo the knot and free Heero's hands, but the other still didn't move. Duo moved to rain kisses on his lower back and his sensitive bottom. He reached out a curious hand and felt the wetness on the inside of Heero's thighs; sweat and excess lube that had dripped out of his hole and was spread over his skin while Duo had been slamming into him.

He wiped his slick hand on the sheets and crawled up alongside Heero's body to lay flush against him. He nuzzled his ear with the tip of his nose. "Are you okay?"

Heero turned his head sideways and peered at his lover. "Yeah. That was intense."

"Hmhmm." Duo chuckled. He stroked a hand through the tousled hair of his partner.

Heero sighed contently and closed his eyes.

Not wanting the moment to be mistaken for something romantic or to lead him on, Duo stopped petting Heero's hair and pointed out: "You're lying in the wet spot. I'll go get you something to clean up with." He rolled off the bed and trotted over to the small bathroom. He opened the sink faucet and used his hands to wash his own groin, not caring about the water that dripped down his legs. Then he folded some toilet paper together and moistened it with water and he walked that back to Heero. Rather than tenderly cleaning him, he offered him the tissue so he could clean himself. He sat up and rubbed away the smear of come on his abdomen first and then wiped the tissue between his legs.

Duo stared for a moment and then announced he was going to take a shower.

Under the hot spray he closed his eyes and let the water clean his skin and soothe his muscles. It had been quite the work-out and it would feel so good to crawl into bed alongside Heero and just let himself drift away to sleep. It would be much more enjoyable than getting dressed and driving back home to his empty apartment and getting into the cold bed that was too big for him alone.

With no shampoo or soap available – there was, technically, a bar of soap provided by the motel, but he didn't trust it – he soon finished and he dried himself off with a towel Heero had brought with him.

The agent walked into the room, still completely naked. He wasn't looking forward to jumping into his clothes, the fabric always felt too coarse after the sex had set all of his nerve endings alight, leaving him hyper sensitive.

Heero was sitting on the bed. He popped open a small bag of chips and took a sip from a can of soda before putting a salty chip in his mouth. His cell phone was on the bed in front of him, with a lot of text displayed on the screen.

"Did you go out to the vending machine looking like that?" He pointedly looked at his lover, dressed in only his boxers and his white shirt – he hadn't bothered with more than one button, at the height of his midriff – and his tousled hair, hooded eyes and swollen bottom lip made it unmistakable to all who would lay eyes on him that he had just been fucked.

"So what? Everyone walks around half naked in this place."

"Exactly, and I don't want them getting any ideas when they look at you." He crawled onto the bed and distracted Heero with a kiss on the corner of his mouth so he could steal a handful of chips.

"Hey!" He pulled the bag into his lap to protect it from Duo's greedy fingers.

Duo laughed and shook his head at him and started to get dressed; first his pants, then his shoes and then his shirt. It wasn't until he was busy buttoning up the shirt that he noticed Heero was sulking.

As soon as Heero caught him looking at him he exchanged his expression for something sultry and he lay down on his back and with a light touch he parted the sides of his shirt, exposing his smooth, golden stomach and two fingers toyed idly with the singular button that held the shirt together and protected the expanse of his chest from Duo's hungry gaze. "Are you sure you want to leave so soon?"

No, Duo admitted only to himself.

"What if any of those other men 'get any ideas'?"

Duo snorted and pretended that the teasing remark didn't make him insanely jealous at the mere thought of anybody else touching Heero. He fumbled with the buttons. His fingers were suddenly far less coordinated.

Heero sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. He stalked over towards Duo and grabbed his wrists, stopping him from further buttoning up his shirt. He placed a kiss on the exposed hollow of his collar bone and then undid the button underneath. "Just spend the night with me. One night, just talk to me, we never talk anymore. I won't ask for more." His lips brushed against Duo's skin as he spoke.

Duo pursed his lips. He grabbed Heero's shoulders and made the man take a step back. "You're already asking for too much."

Heero pushed his hands off his shoulders. "Why do you get to decide what is enough and what is too much?!" He demanded and he fixed wild eyes on Duo's face. "What about what I want?"

"Don't pretend I didn't give you exactly what you wanted," Duo spat. "You enjoyed getting fucked. You wanted it hard."

"Of course I like it when you fuck me! I love it! But it's not enough for me!" He smacked Duo's hands down when the agent tried again to button up his shirt and was ignoring him. "Listen to me!"

Duo pushed Heero away. Everything was starting to get too close, crowding him, and he felt cornered and scared. "What the fuck, Heero?! I thought we were having fun! Why would you want anything different? What changed?"

"Nothing changed!" Heero shouted in reply. "I've been in love with you before you even showed up at my door!"

Duo stared at him. His heart contracted painfully but he paid it no heed and questioned Heero's vulnerable admission to protect himself from his own feelings. "Oh, come on! You were perfectly fine with just letting me fuck you."

"I had sex with you because I thought it could evolve into something. I wanted it to become more!" He covered his mouth with his hand to shield the tremble in his lower lip from Duo's harsh gaze, but the pain in his eyes was apparent. When he had regained some of his composure he dropped his hand and said: "I thought you could love me too."

Selfishly Duo was angry at the other for saying these things, for expecting things from him that he told him he couldn't give him. "I told you it was just about the sex!"

"But what about all those nights we talked on the phone? Did you forget about that?"

"That was different! I was talking to you as a friend. It was never about becoming involved; about falling in love; about getting a boyfriend," He spat. "I thought you were some ugly, fat guy. When I saw you were hot, I had to pick between staying your phone-friend or fucking you. You didn't object to the call I made."

"But why was that your decision?!" Heero challenged. "And why didn't you tell from the start that those were the only options?!"

"Oh, as if you would have made a different decision. You were all too eager to let me push you up against the wall and jerk you off."

"I don't know what I would have decided!" The first tear trailed down his cheek. "All I know is that I miss my friend!"

Duo blinked at him. Too caught up in the heat of the moment to be rational, he tried to settle the argument and offered angrily: "Fine, then we'll go back to being friends."

"I can't go back!" He wiped away his tears and was clearly disgusted at his own emotional state. He accused: "This is all your fault! I was fine before you showed up in my life! I didn't need anybody! I could sleep alone in my bed and not miss anybody!"

"I told you it was just about the sex!" Duo repeated petulantly. "I don't want a relationship! I don't want the responsibility and I don't want the risk! I told you I have to keep my sexuality a secret. I'm not going to risk my career for something that is doomed to fail!"

Heero glared at him. "You're a fucking coward! And don't pretend that you didn't know you were stringing me along. If it was just about the sex I could have let anybody fuck me."

"You knew exactly what I was offering and you loved every inch of it, you fucking whore!" Duo shouted, losing himself to his blind, indiscriminate anger. He chose his words purposefully for maximum damage. He wanted to hurt Heero the way Heero was hurting him.

Heero balled his hand into a fist and punched him across the jaw hard enough that Duo staggered back and hit his back against the wall. "Fine, I loved it. You got me! The joke is on me! But if sex is all you have to offer I might as well spare myself the forty-five minute drive to this disgusting place and find some other guy with a big dick to fuck me. And maybe he will end up loving me!"

The thought of anyone else having sex with Heero; pushing their cock into that tight, hot opening that he had claimed as his, fueled his fury to an unmanageable intensity and he felt his self-control snap in a way he hadn't experienced since his last drunken outburst. Overwhelmed with rage he warned: "Don't you dare. I'll kill you! I swear, I'll fucking kill you!"

"You can't tell me what to do," Heero hissed. "You're not my boyfriend."

Duo knew he had to leave or else he would end up hitting Heero and although the shorter man packed quite a punch, it wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't be right. Duo was much bigger and stronger and a trained fighter. He didn't want to hurt him.

Heero's gaze hardened. The depth of his blue eyes that previously beckoned Duo into a beautiful drowning, then stretched between them and Heero seemed far away, oceans away, even with less than two feet between them.

Without another word Duo grabbed his jacket and he stormed out of the room, taking some satisfaction in slamming the door shut as hard as he could.

He stalked back to his car and again took out his frustration on the door; also slamming it shut with more force than necessary. He patted himself down for his keys and then sped off and drove onto the highway, heading home. Luckily the road was pretty quiet at the late hour – or early, technically – because he was driving recklessly, not able to calm himself.

His hands were shaking and he felt a cold sweat all over his body, like he was going through withdrawal all over again. After only a few minutes he was shaking so violently that he couldn't even switch gears. He realized that even if he could avoid crashing into another car in the light traffic, he could very well end up wrapping his Jeep around a tree. When he spotted a sign indicating an upcoming gas station he steered the car into the rightmost lane and took the exit. He parked the Jeep out of the way, behind the store, to avoid being seen should anyone else happen to come by.

Duo had to pry his hands off the steering wheel. He was gripping it so tightly, to help with the shaking, that his knuckles were white and his fingers hurt.

He thought about going back and apologizing for the things he had said and for upsetting Heero. The memory of his heartbroken expression would haunt him, he was sure of it. But he also knew that there was no point in going back. The only way to make things right and to keep Heero from looking at him like that, with those eyes full of anguish, would be to agree to a relationship. That was the only thing that would make the other man happy and as tempting as that was, he wasn't ready to be someone's boyfriend. With him not being able to give Heero what he wanted, why would he go back? They would only argue more and hurt each other more.

He lifted the armrest between him and the passenger seat and retrieved his pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the hidden compartment. He shook one of the cigarettes out of the pack and put it between his lips and lit it. He took quick, uncontrolled, panicked drags from the cigarettes, making him cough a couple of times. The cigarette didn't last long with him constantly pulling on it, so he quickly lit a second one.

He had made it through a childhood of delinquency and a stressful career without every lighting a cigarette, until recently. He had started smoking around the same time as he had started drinking. It just seemed like the thing one did; have a drink and have a smoke. His favorite bar, where he had some of his best, numbing drinking experiences always smelled like cigarette-smoke which is how he got hooked. He knew he should quit, but he figured quitting his drinking habit had priority and he could only handle tackling one addiction at a time. Until he felt confident his yearning for alcohol was fully out of his system he calmed his nerves with nicotine.

The problem, of course, was that before he went into rehab he only had a smoke alongside a nice glass of bourbon – and another, and another, and another -, so although the inhalation of the smoke did soothe his anxiety, the taste and smell also made him crave a drink. At the rehab center they had agreed that quitting his smoking habit could wait and to deal with his need for an accompanying drink they suggested 'habit-substitution'. They replaced the habit of drinking alcohol with his cigarette, with drinking water.

And goddammit, those counsellors earned their paycheck, because nowadays he couldn't fully enjoy a smoke without a glass of water. The nicotine was still relaxing, but it didn't feel right not holding something to sip from in his other hand.

Still he didn't trust he could keep his composure enough to be able to head into the store and purchase a bottle of water. He was upset and couldn't stop thinking about Heero and their horrible fight. He regretted saying the nasty things that he did, he didn't want to stop meeting up with Heero, being with him had kept him sane and in that sense it had always been about more than 'just sex'. Having something to look forward to grounded him; it anchored him and saved him from being dragged along by the daily grind of his life. Sex with Heero was the only thing that could make him happy, as of late. He didn't understand how that worked exactly, but it did. He didn't want to lose him. Those hands through his hair, those lips against his, those understanding eyes that could absolve him of all wrongs.

Yet he couldn't shake his petty anger. He blamed Heero for pushing him into a corner and for exploiting his possessive streak, leaving him enraged like that at the thought of other men touching Heero's body. The remark – the threat, rather – to let other men have sex with him, reduced him to something primal. He didn't mean what he had said, he couldn't have killed Heero, but he had no doubt that if Heero followed up on that threat and he happened to witness it, he was fully capable of killing whatever man Heero would choose to replace him with. That measure of jealousy scared him. He had never been the type to share, but such extremes were novel, even to him.

The agent took his phone out of his pocket and typed impulsively:

'I hate what you've made me do. What you've turned me into.'

He sent the message and waited, but there was no reply. He thought about apologizing but disregarded it. He was too proud to admit he had been wrong. He threw the phone into the passenger seat and lit another cigarette.

He wiped at his eyes, at the trails of tears that had fallen without his knowledge, when he spotted the headlights of a car in the rear-view-mirror. He felt uncomfortable showing weakness in a relatively public place, even though the car moved along and turned the corner towards the gas pumps, not paying him any attention of course. Whenever he was upset, he always felt like any given stranger could see him and would judge him for not being manly enough. Which was why he always hid his true feelings behind a crass pun. Of all the guys on the force, Duo probably mocked gay people the most, because he was so afraid they would see the truth otherwise.

He wished he could give Heero what he needed, because Duo knew he also needed it himself, but it wouldn't be the first time his cowardice got in the way. His fear had caused him to let so many good things wither, that he was left to wonder if any good still remained.

His life was such a mess; such a lie.

It took a while but when his hands finally stopped shaking and the reflection of his eyes in the rear-view-mirror didn't unsettle him anymore, he got out of his car and headed into the store. His mouth went parch-dry when he accidentally passed through the aisle of alcoholic drinks on his way to get a bottle of water. He stopped halfway down the aisle and stared at one of the enticing bottles of burnt golden liquid.

"Oh, fuck this." He pivoted on his heels and continued on his way to the refrigerated section. He took a bottle of water and while he stood at the cash register he decided to buy another pack of cigarettes as well.

Back in his car he lit a fresh cigarette and drank his water while he smoked.

When he was done he felt ready to hit the road again and he drove home. But no amount of cigarettes could calm him down enough to be able to sleep that night. He felt high-strung and wound-up. He had to distract himself or else he would just end up thinking about Heero and regretting every word that he had said to him that night. He did what he always did when he couldn't sleep: he cleaned his Jeep, inside and out. His black Jeep was his pride and joy and he had always taken good care of it, but lately especially he made sure the body was polished and the chrome rims gleamed and he vacuumed every hair and dust bunny out of the seats and carpets. It had become an obsession to him, in the absence of any real hobbies.

Once done he went upstairs for a proper shower and nursed two cups of coffee and then he decided to head to the station. He didn't know what else to do. At least at work he could read through the case file of his last undercover job – again – to prepare himself for his testimony in court in a few weeks' time.

There was only a short line of overachieving agents at the security check when he arrived. It was too early in the morning for most to head to work. He took his gun out of the holster on his belt and placed it in the plastic tray along with his watch and cellphone and as he waited to be waved over to step through the metal detector, someone tapped on his shoulder.

Duo turned around and offered Hilde a smile. "Good morning, Sunshine," He greeted her in his usual, chipper fashion.

"Good morning," She replied in kind but then she narrowed her eyes at him and put a finger on her jawline when she said: "Where did you get that bruise?"

Duo felt his face go hot. He hadn't realized Heero's punch had left a visible mark. After a quick search for an excuse he supplied: "It's way too early for me. I was standing over the can, taking a piss and still sleep-drunk I just toppled forward and knocked my chin against the wall."

"Oh." She grimaced as she sympathized with his pain, but an amused smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Yeah, sure, laugh at the misfortune of those who pee standing up."

She chuckled freely. "Anyway, nice five o'clock shadow," She teased, "Although I always thought they meant pm, not am."

Confident his lie had been accepted he smiled at her joke and went through the metal detectors and was cleared to go upstairs. After getting his watch, phone and gun from the tray he waved her goodbye.

The first thing he did once he got up to his floor was go to the men's restrooms to check his reflection. The bruise was a faint purple. Since he had neglected to shave since yesterday morning his stubble hid the discoloration reasonably well, but in a building full of cops it was bound to be noticed and get some attention. The only one he worried about was his boss, Milliardo. He would suspect it would have something to do with his drinking behavior of the past; when he used to get involved in drunken bar-brawls.

He went to his desk and opened up the file on his undercover case. He wanted to make sure he knew it backwards, the conviction depended on his testimony. It would be a good way to prove to Milliardo that he was back on his feet. Show him he was the same, reliable guy he was before. He had given Milliardo reason to that doubt that and he hated himself for it, but the man really needed to get off his back and stop scrutinizing his every move.

Unfortunately the letters blended together on the paper and his thoughts wandered elsewhere. He checked his cellphone but Heero still hadn't responded to his text. He started to type an apology, but then deleted every word and put his phone in his pocket. He stared out the window, trying to decide if he was more angry at himself or Heero. He had no right to be angry with Heero, he realized that, but that didn't mean he wasn't. Emotions were, by nature, not susceptible to logic.

He turned in his chair when someone knocked on the corner of his desk. His eyes slowly focused on his boss, Milliardo Peacecraft, and he thought to smile when he saw the first hint of that familiar frown on the handsome man's face. "Zechs! I should have known you would be at the office at fuck'o'clock."

"Don't call me Zechs," He corrected.

Duo shook his head. The man had really grown to hate his old undercover alias, which was exactly why he enjoyed pestering him with it.

"We've picked up a case."

"Cool." Duo got up from his chair and worked his arms into the sleeves of his jacket. "Let's go."

"Are you really up for this?"

He paused with his jacket halfway on. He knew the agent meant well, all Milliardo had ever done was look out for him, but it started to get on his nerves being second-guessed every step of the way. Without trying to boost his own ego, he was one of the best and Milliardo had always acknowledged that, but nowadays Duo wondered if he could ever stop seeing him as the drunk asshole who nearly cost them both their careers. Trying to be patient, the way Mill had been patient with him, he assured him: "Of course…" But he couldn't refrain himself from reminding his boss: "You promised you would get off my back once I got back on duty."

"And you promised you would tell me if something was up."

Quickly becoming increasingly agitated with the lack of trust, he whispered in response: "And I'm keeping that promise. There's nothing to tell."

"So there's no story behind that bruise? Or the fact that you come in at five in the morning and you're trying to hide that bruise with that hideous stubble?"

Duo groaned. "I'm not trying to hide anything! I had a stumble in the bathroom and forgot to shave. As you pointed out yourself, I'm not used to getting in at such an early hour." He watched his reaction closely and hoped the lie was as effective with him as it had been with Hilde.

"Alright."

Milliardo seemed unconvinced, but there was nothing he could say to change his mind. "Zechs, seriously. I'm cool."

"Fine… Don't call me Zechs."

The two of them went down to the parking garage and Duo got into the passenger seat, knowing Mill always insisted on driving ever since Duo's drinking problem had made itself apparent. He hardly had the right to blame Mill for distrusting him.

The drive was quiet and normally this would irritate would Duo, but his thoughts were scattered – he still couldn't get his fight with Heero out of his head – so he welcomed the moment of peace before he would have to focus all his attention on this new case. He didn't have the kind of job that allowed him to slack off for a day once in a while, when he wasn't feeling up for it, and he had already been more of a headache than a help to the team when his drinking reached its peak. He was committed to being the agent he used to be; the agent who could really immerse himself in a case and come up with the unexpected solutions.

"Did you go to the meeting last night?" Milliardo interrupted the silence.

Duo shot him a look. "Yes, I went to the meeting, mom. As I go to all my meetings."

"Dial down the snarky attitude. I stuck my neck out for you."

"Don't worry. Your neck is fine." He looked back out the window. The scenery was familiar. He had gone down that highway many times on the way to the motel to meet with Heero. "Where are we headed, Philly?"

Mill didn't even answer his question. Instead, he kept bugging him. "I'm not trying to get on your case or give you grief. I'm just looking out for you. It's my responsibility."

"It's not."

"It is, Duo," He snapped. "You became my responsibility when I made the call not to report your issues to IA."

"I'm alright, Mill, you made the right call. I'm grateful for what you did, I won't let you down. I'm better now." He looked at him with an earnest expression. He meant what he said. He didn't want to disappoint Milliardo, but he felt that if Mill kept looking at him through a magnifying glass, he would never live up to the promises he had made him and the expectations that Mill cherished.

Milliardo nodded and said nothing. He stared up ahead, but didn't seem to be minding the surrounding traffic much.

Duo snapped his fingers in front of his face, to get him out of his own head. "Mill."

Milliardo glanced at him.

"I'm okay," He repeated.

"I trust you."

Duo's heart clenched, but he remained casual. "Good. Anything I should know before we get to the crime scene?"

"Too late. We're already here."

Duo frowned and looked out the windows. They were nowhere near Philadelphia yet. His heart rate quickened when Milliardo took an all-too-familiar exit and a cold sweat came over him when they took a left turn and ended up on the parking lot of the Sunburst French Creek motel; the motel where he had been with Heero only the night before. Even though there had been previous, unrelated, violent crimes at the motel and it was likely this was just another case that didn't concern him, a sickening thought popped up in his head. A thought that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and made his skin crawl. He wetted his dry lips with his tongue and tried to swallow, but he couldn't work his throat.

"This is the place?" He asked dumbly. The yellow tape in front of them, not to mention the gathered police cars and reporters, made it obvious this was 'the place'.

"Yeah. You remember those other cases, don't you?"

He did, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this case would be different. That this case would be personal. When Mill climbed out of the car, he followed his lead. His movements were stiff, but he managed to hide his shock. Absent-mindedly, he recounted the past crimes that had occurred at the motel: two gay bashings and a robbery at gunpoint of a guest who was dealing meth out of his motel room. "The media was all over it," He mentioned. Everyone knew about those cases. He scanned the parking lot and noticed Heero's blue sedan was still parked where he had last seen it, last night. His heart sank.

"And they will have a field-day with this one as well. If we don't solve it, it will be the fourth unsolved crime at this motel and we'll be the 'homophobic' assholes who didn't care enough to catch the killer."

They went underneath the police tape and while Milliardo talked to the detective on site, all Duo could do was stare at the open door. The faded lettering read '102'. It was their room. It was the room he had left Heero alone in last night. What had happened after he left? He noticed the coroner's van parked to the side and his stomach tightened into a coil as he watched them roll out a black body bag onto a gurney in preparation. He nearly doubled over with pain and nausea, but he managed to remain looking professional. If he told Mill he had been in that room just last night and he knew the guest that stayed there, he would be sent home immediately. He couldn't let that happen, he needed to see what was in that room. He had to see it with his own eyes.

A sergeant appeared and he shook their hands before leading them into the room, saying something about a John Doe.

"Motel front desk doesn't have an ID on him?"

"Room is paid for in cash, for an extended stay. The room has been rented by the same guy for the past couple of weeks."

Duo paid no attention to the exchange between his boss and the sergeant. Walking into that room, knowing it was a crime scene, was one of the hardest things he ever had to do. He idled by the door, stalling, afraid of what he would see if he followed the sergeant's lead and would look into the bathroom.

Quietly and imperceptibly he took a deep breath and then he walked to the doorway leading to the bathroom for a quick peek. Relief washed over him when it was instantly apparent that the man on the floor was not Heero. The man was much taller and broader and had black hair. His face was unrecognizable after violently impacting with the edge of the sink and yet there was still something familiar about it, but he couldn't place it. To prevent Milliardo from noticing his emotional state he stepped away and kept his back turned until he felt in control of himself.

"Too bad," The sergeant said. "We had a bet going. I was sure it was just a sad."

"Aren't all deaths sad, sergeant Mueller?"

"No, not 'sad'. A SAD. S-A-D."

Milliardo looked to Duo with confusion written on his face. "What's that? S-A-D?"

"Slip-and-die," Duo replied dryly. He ignored the back-and-forth between them, even as Milliardo clearly became irritated with the sergeant's casual approach and lack of respect.

His eyes scanned the room which bore evidence of a struggle and a pretty intense one. Heero's overnight bag was on the desk, his change of clothes still tucked inside, it proved that he had stayed behind after Duo had left and had been part of the fight that had occurred which caused John Doe's unfortunate demise in the bathroom. With the inside information that he had, he quickly narrowed down the options of what could have happened until one scenario remained plausible. Two or more men had come into the room and had taken Heero. The Japanese man had defended himself, he was deceptively strong, and the fact that people always underestimated him must have given him an advantage in the fight. After the initial struggle he had tried to escape to the bathroom, but one of them followed him in there before he could lock the door. In the cramped space he had gotten the better of one of his attackers and had slammed his face into the sink, killing him. Obviously, there had been more attackers, otherwise Heero wouldn't be missing. He had been kidnapped.

Or at least, he hoped he had been kidnapped. The other option was that they killed him and disposed of his body, but he chose to believe differently. He chose to have faith.

When the sergeant had been sent out of the room by an angry Milliardo, Duo commented: "Was it really necessary to make him nearly piss his pants?" It was important that he kept up the game of pretense. If he made it known that he had a personal relationship with one of the victims their team would get taken off the case and that meant more delays in the case, more information lost in translation and then a lesser team would be tasked with the responsibility of finding Heero in time, with the odds already stacked up against them. He wanted the best to be out looking for Heero and he knew their team was the best.

Obviously, Milliardo would find out sooner or later, but by then they may have already found Heero, or unearthed a good lead at least.

They put on their gloves and went to work, asking the Forensics team to give them a moment. Milliardo quickly discovered the used condom – used by him – and drew the correct conclusion. "Someone was definitely in this room with him."

Duo used the opportunity to give his insight, hopefully without betraying the entire truth. "Yeah, because John Doe is not the guest who rented this room." At Mill's expected, questioning look Duo took Heero's shirt out of the bag and held it up for him to see. The shirt was clearly too small to fit the John Doe in the bathroom and Milliardo agreed.

"So the guest has a visitor, has sex with him and then… what? A lover's quarrel turned ugly? He kills him and flees?"

"But leaves his stuff and a dead body in the bathroom of his own room?" Duo challenged. He had to steer the investigation in the right direction, so they could find Heero as quickly as possible.

"Doesn't make sense…" Milliardo agreed. "But there's no phone, so he must've taken that with him at least. If we can get an ID we might be able to track the cellphone number."

Duo knew that they would soon enough figure out Heero's identity thanks to his car still being in the parking lot, so he refrained himself from shouting out his name.

Barton and Chang arrived on the scene and Milliardo went outside to get them up to speed and give them orders. He tasked Duo with overseeing the Forensics crew. Normally, he would have objected to baby-sitting the techs, but any excuse to not have to be around his boss and under his careful watch was good enough for him.

Duo observed the techs retrieve the condom from the trash and lift fingerprints off the nightstand, desk and doors. He knew some of those prints would match his, but with a bit of luck it took the Forensics department long enough to make their way through all the prints. He wasn't worried about the condom or the hairs pulled from the bed. His DNA was not on file, unlike his finger prints. Not until he would be asked to give a sample would they be able to prove the condom and the brown hairs were his.

He flinched when WuFei appeared behind him – the man always snuck up to him, he walked quietly like a predator stalking its prey. He was pleased to find out they had indeed managed to identify the missing person as Heero, but his face felt hot when the other agent announced it was their job to search the house. He had only been at Heero's home that one time, he had purposefully avoided it since then and it scared him a little to have to go back there, he worried he might break down and become an emotional mess.

On their way to the house in Philadelphia – he let WuFei drive – he stared out the window and luckily WuFei was never one for chitchat.

He hated himself for leaving him behind. If only he had staid the night, like Heero had asked him to. They had to find Heero, safe and sound, he thought to himself, he had to do what he had failed to do last night: save him.

The car stopped in front of the house and Duo stared at it for a moment before following Chang up to the front door.

WuFei knocked on the door, considering the possibility that Heero had a roommate or live-in partner.

Duo waited a few seconds before declaring no-one was home and he didn't waste any time picking the lock with the kit he carried with him at all times. WuFei stood off to the side, with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He didn't approve of Duo's lock-picking, but he knew they had to have a look inside, that was why Mill had sent them there and he was all about following orders. As long as he didn't have to break any rules himself, he wouldn't nag too much about honor or justice.

Technically, they weren't allowed to enter the house before going through all the proper legal channels, but time was of the essence. The proper paperwork was a formality that they would deal with after the fact, as they always did when they suspected a kidnapping. People they had saved had only ever been too thankful to file a complaint about them snooping in their homes without permission. Until everything was cleared with the home-owners, they might get a scolding from the higher-ups, but Mill would always protect them from the brunt of it.

The door opened and they headed inside.

The American paused in the hallway, remembering the last time he had stood in that exact spot.

He looked around, into the kitchen on the left, the study straight ahead and the living room with sitting area and dining table to the right. He noted a significant change. The singular lounge chair in front of the TV had been replaced with a big, comfortable couch and there were two new chairs at the dinner table and two barstools in the kitchen.

With a heavy heart he recognized Heero had made room for him in his home, in his life, always expecting Duo to come back there one day; to have a romantic dinner with him, snuggling together on the couch for a movie and having breakfast in the kitchen in the morning.

Heero's words from the night before hit home. 'I was fine before you showed up in my life! I didn't need anybody! I could sleep alone in my bed and not miss anybody!'

Heero had wanted more out of their relationship and, daring to hope, he had purchased new furniture so Duo could come home with him. But Duo had never come back there, leaving Heero to sit by himself on that big couch and stare at an empty chair every morning at breakfast and every evening at dinner. Before Duo had showed up on his doorstep, there had never been an empty place in his house, but now there was and it must have been a sore reminder of what Duo wouldn't give him.

WuFei briefly inspected the bank of computer screens at Heero's desk and then declared there was nothing to see downstairs, so they headed to the second level.

Upstairs a narrow hallway connected the staircase to the master bedroom, a tiny spare bedroom and a bathroom. They went into the master bedroom, where Duo had never even been. The room was spacious and double doors opened up to a large balcony, but there was no furniture outside so it didn't seem like Heero ever went out there. The color scheme was dark, making the room more cozy and warm. What stood out amidst the shades of eggplant and grey and accents of black, was a single white pillow on the bed. Duo guessed it was a pillowcase Heero had stolen from the motel and it probably smelled like him at some point.

The words rang in his head mercilessly: 'I could sleep alone in my bed and not miss anybody!'

He clenched his fists on either side of him. He hadn't been fair to Heero and it scared him that he might never get to apologize and make amends for his selfish actions.

What if he was already dead and one of the last things the person he loved said to him was 'You fucking whore'?

WuFei opened the drawer of one of the bedside tables and he snorted. Cynically, he remarked: "Well, he's definitely a fag." He used one of his latex gloves to retrieve something from the private drawer and held it up for Duo to see; a vibrator. "And there are more like it."

"Fuck, WuFei!" He snapped. "Put that back. Show some respect!" His body trembled with anger.

WuFei eyed him suspiciously. The one thing they used to have in common was making fun of queers. WuFei was one of those straight-laced, traditional types who still believed homosexuality was a lifestyle, a choice, and the wrong one at that. Duo always joined him in mockery to protect his own sexual identity, but he couldn't stand the Chinese agent judging Heero.

"Okay." He put the vibrator away and shut the drawer. He slammed it hard enough to make Duo jump.

The long haired agent turned his back towards his partner. He knew his unusual behavior would make WuFei suspicious. He busied himself looking through the dresser. As a detective he had gone through many underwear drawers over the span of his career, it was always a favorite hiding-place, but he had never rummaged through underwear that he actually recognized. He remembered stripping some of those boxer briefs off Heero, sometimes pushing them down only far enough to expose his opening so he could fuck him while the elastic fabric kept his thighs together.

Heero wasn't a whore, but still Duo had treated him like a human sex-toy. He had no right to reduce him to a piece of meat, to cheapen Heero's pure affections.

During any other investigation he would have left the underwear drawer completely ransacked, but – as if that could make things right – he took the time to neatly rearrange the briefs.

"There's nothing here," WuFei concluded.

Duo agreed. Nothing in the house was motive for kidnapping; no money, no drugs. Heero didn't have any rich relatives the kidnappers could call for ransom and he didn't have any connections, through his job or otherwise. Heero was a nobody, as they would normally say. Whatever had been done to him, it was personal. Usually a disgruntled ex-lover was involved, but Duo knew Heero well enough to know that he had only few relationships worth mentioning, from a long time ago, and they didn't end badly.

"Maybe it was all random," WuFei mused aloud as they headed downstairs. "That motel was swarming with gay guys looking to satisfy their sexual needs. It could be that someone just took him for sex."

Duo shuddered. The thought had crossed his mind. What other explanation remained?

They were headed back to the car when Duo's phone rang. Milliardo's name blinked on his screen and Duo was irritated at the thought that he might be calling to check up on him. "Maxwell."

"Hey." There was a long pause before Mill continued: "How's it going?"

Duo frowned at the oddly vague question. "Uhm… Good." At WuFei's curious look he shrugged his shoulders. "We're done at the house. There's nothing here that looks like it has to do with anything."

"So, nothing to report at Yuy's house?" Milliardo pressed.

It wasn't like Milliardo to micro-manage. If he said there was nothing, there was nothing! "Just a regular place. Clean and organized, but not in an alarming, serial-killer-kind-of-way." He forced the joke to convince everyone that he was fine.

The boss was hardly amused. He barked: "Meet me at the station. Now."

Duo pocketed his phone and sat back while WuFei drove them back to the station.

When they arrived they went up to Milliardo's office for their assignments. WuFei was quickly delegated to desk-duty and the Chinese man left, mumbling something under his breath. Duo idled in the doorway, waiting for instructions. When the blond agent remained silent and he noted how tense he was, he asked: "What's gotten into you?"

Milliardo looked at him sharply. His eyes were pleading. "Please be honest with me."

Duo's heart skipped a beat and his palms went sweaty. Surely he hadn't been found out so soon? "About what?" He tried to brush it off. "I told you I'm fine. Jeez, you come into work early one day-"

The other agent interrupted him. "Hiroshi Yuy."

Duo knew his boss was fishing, he didn't have the whole story. He kept his emotions in check. "What about him?"

Milliardo wasn't completely fooled by his innocent tone. "Please admit that you know him."

He forced a laugh and tried to throw him off. "Well, I just went through his underwear drawer but that hardly means I know the guy. Certainly not more than WuFei, you should ask him what he found in the nightstand…"

Milliardo looked off to the side, disappointed and unsettled. "Why are you lying?" He demanded.

"I'm not lying!" Duo argued in vain.

"Stop it! Just stop it!"

Duo's blood went cold when Mill showed him Heero's phone inside an evidence bag. What did it mean that they had found the phone? Did they find Heero? Was he…?

"We found his cellphone in the bushes, Duo. You guys have been exchanging text messages. Clearly, you know him."

He knew he couldn't deny it. "It's not a big deal-"

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you lie?"

"Because I knew the team would get taken off the case. You and I both know what happens to cases when they get shuttled from one department to another, from team to team. Every time a case changes hands, the odds of it going unsolved doubles." His answer was completely honest.

"That's hardly an exact science."

"Call it a ballpark-figure. The exact numbers don't matter. What matters is that we are the best. So I had a choice, tell you I know the guy – barely, by the way – and have us booted off the case, or keep it a secret. It was a choice between giving the best odds and the worst odds, what was I supposed to do?"

"How do you know Hiroshi Yuy?"

Duo knew he had to lie if he wanted the team to stay on the case. He had to make Mill believe that his relationship with Heero was as platonic as possible. "For starters I know him as 'Heero Yuy'," He started and that was not untrue, "And we met in rehab. As of late, we've been going to same AA sessions and meeting up once in a while. That's what we text about." He could tell Milliardo had trouble trusting him and he hated that he had to lie to the other man, after everything Mill had done for him.

"What about that last text?"

"What last text?" The American quipped and a terrifying cold sunk into his bones when Milliardo repeated the words of the angry text message he had sent Heero. "That's private," He tried to deflect.

"Nothing is private in a murder investigation, Duo."

He was forced to make up a bullshit story to explain away the message and he swore to Mill – lying through his teeth – that he had never been to the motel.

Finally, Milliardo seemed more at ease. "I choose to trust you," He said, making Duo feel like even more of an asshole. "Don't make me a fool."

He was dismissed and he headed down to the bullpen where WuFei and Trowa were working the case. Rather than telling either of them he had been instructed to split the work load with them, he said nothing and took a seat at his desk. He opened the case file and forced him to study the gruesome photo of John Doe's smashed-in face. His cheekbones, nose and upper jaw were completely destroyed. All that remained was his short, Neanderthal-forehead, thick, protruding brows, small eyes that were too close together and his big, masculine chin. He stared at the features and he knew he had seen the man before, but it was impossible to recognize him with half of his face pulverized. Odds were he had seen him on the parking lot of the motel once or twice, but alarm bells went off in his head regardless.

He was certain Heero had not been taken for money or personal revenge and if rape was the objective like WuFei had suggested, whoever was responsible could have just kept him locked-up in the motel room and had his way with the Japanese male right there. It wasn't the kind of place where people would rush to someone's aid if they hears screams or a fight.

Duo couldn't shake the feeling that somehow Heero's disappearance had something to do with him. Duo didn't have any money, much like Heero, and he didn't have any angry exes because he never had a serious relationship. But there were plenty of people out there who resented him: dangerous criminals who's business he had thwarted and who's friends he had incarcerated, or killed during a shoot-out. Those were exactly the kind of people who would be hungry for revenge and violent and stupid enough to carry it out. Either they had been after him and missed him by half an hour, or they had waited for him to leave and had kidnapped Heero on purpose to punish him.

He scoured through the database of mugshots. He suspected he might have met John Doe in the line of duty and he hoped he would be able to ID him by going through the mugshots of everyone involved in his more recent cases. He clicked from photo to photo and so far hadn't been able to match one with the picture of the disfigured Doe.

The problem was that it could just as easily be an old case coming back to haunt him. It could be a criminal arrested as many as ten years ago, seeking revenge after just now being released from prison. This included people he had dealt with during his time in the undercover unit, John Doe could be any random crook he had met during those grueling years. This meant the pool of possibilities was a lot bigger, but he had no way to look up the information on recent releases, or all associates of every gang he had ever dealt with without involving Administration.

Trowa's hand landed on his shoulder. "What are you working on?"

"Oh, just…" He gestured vaguely at his computer screen. When he caught a glimpse of the time he felt embarrassed. He had been scrolling through the images for over an hour and it had been a total waste of time.

"The boss wants to talk to you."

"Oh… Okay." An ominous feeling settled over him. "Is he in his office?"

Barton looked apologetic. "Interrogation room 2."

"He has a suspect?" Duo inquired hopefully.

"Yeah. You."

His face blanched. The game of pretend was over. He slowly got up from his seat and was about to walk away but the other agent wouldn't let him by.

"Take your gun out of the holster and leave it in your desk drawer," He ordered in a hushed voice.

"Are you serious?"

"Just do it. Don't make a scene." He nodded at WuFei and the other agents who were only just out of earshot.

As casual as possible he grabbed his gun and placed it in the top drawer of his desk.

Trowa nodded and stepped aside.

He walked out of the bullpen and he could feel the other agent's gaze on his back. He paused in front of the door of interrogation room 2 and wiped his palms on his jacket. The empty holster was jarringly light, he missed the weight on his belt. Everything felt off. He wondered if his lies would cost him his badge but at the moment he didn't worry about that. As long as nothing he had done would cost Heero his life, it would be fine.

After a final, deep breath, he opened the door and made eye-contact with Mill. The man had a cold look in his eyes. Duo grinned nervously.

"Sit down."

Duo swallowed. He cast a glance at the chair opposite of Milliardo; the suspect's chair. He stepped into the room and let the door fall shut behind him. Milliardo kept his piercing eyes trained on him. He stood by the chair and rested one hand on the back of it, but he was apprehensive about taking a seat. He knew what it meant that he was being invited to sit there.

"Sit down, Duo."

He recognized there was no persuading his boss that all of that was unnecessary. More than a little perturbed, he sat down. In hopes of easing the tension, he quipped: "What's up with the new digs, Zechs? Office getting refurbished?"

"Don't call me Zechs."

"What are we doing here, Mill? What's going on?"

"You tell me. No lies this time."

Duo sighed and sat back in the chair. He naturally adopted a defiant attitude that he had relied on in the past, during his undercover days, to protect himself. He didn't want Mill to see how shaken he was, yet he couldn't fight the constriction in his throat that kept him from being able to speak.

Milliardo confronted him with the facts. He had discovered that Duo had lied to him about not being at that motel. The man knew he had been coming there for two months to meet up with Heero at night, including last night. He finished: "The manager remembers you, thanks to your braid."

He chuckled bitterly. "The goddamn braid," He managed to croak. He pulled the rope of hair over his shoulder and nervously fidgeted with the end of it. During one of his undercover ops he remembered one of his 'fellow' criminals warning him that the braid was too recognizable and would get him in trouble eventually. He would have never predicted that the drug dealer would end up being right.

Milliardo disrupted his trip down memory lane. "Forensics have already matched fingerprints found at the scene with yours. I'm guessing the long brown hairs in the bed and the used condom in the trash are also yours, correct?"

They had reached the point where lying was truly useless. He had to be honest and that included being honest about the sexual relationship he had with Heero, even though it hurt him to admit to his colleague that he was gay. They had to get this over with quickly so they could all get back to work; back to finding Heero. "Correct."

Milliardo was visibly offended. "Why did you lie to me about your relationship with him?"

Duo scoffed. "I already told you. I didn't want our team to get booted off the case because of my personal relationship with Heero. We are the best and I want the best to be out looking for him."

"You had to have known we would find the link between you and Yuy soon enough."

"Of course I did, but I was hoping that it would take a while, so we would at least find a decent lead before then." This line of questioning was a waste of time and he was getting increasingly agitated and impatient.

Milliardo shook his head at him. "What have you done, Duo? This looks so bad…"

"Come on! Obviously I didn't have anything to do with the murder or the kidnapping!" Duo wrapped his arms around himself. He felt exposed and embarrassed. He bit back: "So I slept with Heero, so what? It is irrelevant to the case."

Milliardo laughed at him and that served to piss him off even further. "Irrelevant? In any other case we would be convinced we had our guy. You were there last night, Duo. The guest next door heard Yuy have sex with someone and then they had a fight. That was you, wasn't it? You slept with Yuy and then you argued." He watched Duo clench his fists. "He called you a coward. You called him a whore… And then you said you would kill him!"

Duo hated having those words thrown in his face, as if he didn't already regret what he had said enough, now his angry outburst also implicated him in the case and distracted the team from finding the actual person responsible! "So I said something stupid?!" He exclaimed, raw with guilt. "What else is new? It's like the guy next door from us said, I left! I stormed out! I didn't kidnap him or kill that other guy!"

"What time did you leave?"

He paused and tried to remember exactly. "A quarter to two," He estimated and then went on to insist: "And I didn't come back. I went home!"

Milliardo took a moment to study his notes and it felt like an eternity went by. In the meantime, Heero was out there, somewhere, frightened, perhaps in pain, perhaps cold… The longer the pointless interrogation lasted, the more acutely he became aware of what a waste of time it was. He counted every second of lost time; every second neither of them were out there actually trying to save Heero.

With a distraught tone to his voice, he asserted: "You know I had nothing to do with this. You know me!"

Milliardo blinked at him. His face was unreadable. "Do I?"

His stomach churned.

"Everyone calls you 'Duo', not 'agent Maxwell' and you know everyone by name. You hand out donuts when we close a case and you are always the one to remind me when I'm about to forget someone's birthday… You have all of us convinced you are our best friend, but nobody really knows you. I know nothing about you."

His heartrate sped up dangerously. Every word Milliardo said was true and he realized how bad it made him look. He never intended to fool or manipulate anyone because he didn't care for them, he had been scared and had only tried to protect himself, but Milliardo didn't know that. There was only one person who knew the truth; Heero.

Mill was merciless as he went on. His words were blunt and destructive, like a jackhammer chipping away at concrete. "I don't know what you do in your spare time. I don't know what kind of sports you like. I've never been to your apartment. I never hear you mention a girlfriend… or a boyfriend. I don't know if you have a pet. I don't know why you keep your hair long. I don't know what you did last Thanksgivings, or who you celebrated Christmas with, or any holiday."

"But none of that is important. You know me, you know I wouldn't…"

Milliardo wasn't letting him talk his way out of it. "You have a temper, I've seen you snap. I know you can be violent and dangerous when you've been drinking. That's what I know."

Mill's implication that he might have been drinking insulted and enraged him. "I haven't been drinking, I told you!" He slammed his fists onto the table, even though his anger only proved the point Milliardo was making. He couldn't keep his cool. He was too stressed and too scared.

"You also told me you were in rehab two full months, you never mentioned checking out twice a week to go to that damn motel!"

"To be with Heero," He declared and his face went red, "not to get wasted! I haven't had a drink in months!"

Milliardo's next word were like a stab in his heart. "You can't seriously expect me to still be able to trust you."

He knew he couldn't blame the agent for distrusting him. He had misled him and he himself was responsible for the consequences. Still, it hurt to hear him say those words so bitterly.

Suddenly the door burst open, interrupting their quiet moment of reflection and they were both caught off guard, nearly leaping out of their seat.

WuFei stood in the doorway and he refused to look at Duo. "Boss, a word?"

"Yeah." Milliardo left him alone in the interrogation room to meet with WuFei in the hallway.

Duo toyed with the end of his braid and worried about what had been so urgent that Chang interrupted the interview. It was against protocol and normally the Chinese man was all about following protocol. He hoped there was a break in the case, that they had uncovered a lead and were close to finding Heero. As a detective he knew the statistics on adult kidnapping and they frightened him and in any other case he would disregard any kind of hope as naiveté. But now that he is was in the other chair and the person who was missing was someone he cared about, not some stranger, he realized remaining hopeful was a necessity; it was a survival strategy of the mind. If he lost hope, he would go crazy and they didn't have time for that.

The clock was ticking.

He became more and more anxious the longer it took for Milliardo to return. When the door opened, it was not the blond agent, but instead WuFei who walked inside and took Mill's seat across from him. "Where's Mill?"

WuFei didn't answer him. He was doing his usual bit where he ignored the suspect and ominously flipped open the case file and looked at it like he had all the answers there and a confession was merely a formality.

Duo had seem him interrogate enough people to know his game-plan and he knew he had to prepare himself. Obviously, he wouldn't fall for the manipulation, since he knew the magician's tricks, but he knew WuFei was about to test and prod him and purposefully drive him to the edge. Flustered suspects were less capable liars and once he had them there he would flip the switch and play the buddy, tell them he understood, tell them there were 'alleviating circumstances'. That's when most suspects would admit their involvement.

They were still in the quiet phase of WuFei's strategy. Without a word he lay three black and white pictures on the table in front of Duo. He didn't say anything, or ask him anything. Most suspects would start volunteering information.

Duo wisely kept his mouth shut, forcing WuFei to break pattern. Chang was poor at improvisation.

"You said you left the motel at a quarter to two," He stated.

Duo grinned at him and said nothing, to throw him off. He wasn't going to play along with him. WuFei saw the world in black and white only, the man was already convinced Duo was guilty. Nothing he could say could change his mind.

"These are security camera images from the gas station. You arrived there half an hour later than you should have if you truly left the motel at a quarter to two."

He kept staring at the agent.

"This is the part where you talk."

Duo shook his head. "This is the part where you actually ask me a question. That's the whole point of an 'interrogation'; interrogate, question, investigate, query, examine, inquire… grill, roast, pump, quiz…"

"This is all a game to you, isn't it?"

"No," He shot back smartly.

WuFei heaved a deep sigh. "Why did you make these purchases at two thirty, when you supposedly left the motel at a quarter to two?"

"As you can see, I bought cigarettes. The reason I was buying cigarettes was because I smoked the last of my pack sitting in my Jeep parked behind the store."

"Why did you stop there for a smoke?"

"I was upset. As the witness reported, I had a fight with Heero."

"Hiroshi Yuy?" He verified.

"Yes. You're getting very good at this question-thing."

Duo's mockery annoyed the serious agent. "What did you to argue about?"

Duo clenched his fists under the table. "That's none of your business. It's not important for the case."

"I decide what is and what isn't important to the case. What was the fight about?" He held his pen ready by his black notebook.

"I'm not going to tell you. It's a waste of time to follow this line of investigation," He growled in response.

"Why are you so certain of that?"

"Because I didn't kidnap Heero!"

"Right." WuFei's mouth was a thin, taut line. "Well, I agree. I don't believe you kidnapped mister Yuy."

"Oh, really?" He scoffed. "Then why am I still in this fucking chair? Who's playing a game now, huh?"

The agent closed the notebook and put his pen in his breast pocket. His every movement was slowed down purposefully to agitate Duo. He placed his hands on the table, entwining the fingers. "I'm serious. You didn't kidnap him… You killed him."

Through gritted teeth Duo snarled: "Fuck you, WuFei."

"I hate what you've made me do. What you've turned me into," He read out loud from the notes and suggested: "Killing? A murderer?"

"Why would I sent that message to Heero's phone if I killed him? It doesn't make any sense."

"Guilty conscience, or just plain crazy. Maybe you thought you could apologize to him by sending a message out there."

Duo shook his head. "You are 'just plain crazy'."

"All the evidence points to you. And if you kidnapped him, you wouldn't have come to work early, if anything you would have been late. Even later than usual. You would have still been playing with him."

Duo felt his anger boil and bubble dangerously close underneath the surface. The dry, matter-of-fact tone with which WuFei accused him only further fueled his rage.

"Your fingerprints were on the scene. As was your DNA, in the semen in the used condom. One witness saw you come to the room last night. Another witness heard you have a heated argument with the victim, post-coital. You show up to work – too early – unshaven, unkempt, exhausted after clearly missing a night's worth of sleep and you have a bruise on your face, indicating you were part of the same struggle, with mister Yuy, that got our John Doe killed. I saw you were looking at old mugshots. He was one of your friends from your time as an undercover cop, wasn't he? You had to dispose of Heero, because he would trace back to, but you didn't have time to get rid of Doe as well, did you? He's much bigger, more difficult to maneuver. You were looking at the mugshots to check to make sure he isn't in our system and you were probably ready to delete his file if he was."

Duo started shaking his head.

"You left after your argument with mister Yuy but you waited in the parking lot for your old pal to help you out," WuFei continued to hypothesize. "Two men strong you went back to the room to get Yuy. As you had predicted, he was stronger than he looked - which was why you called Doe in the first place – and in the struggle Yuy managed to kill Doe in self-defense. But you get the upper-hand and you put Yuy in your car. You're in a hurry so you leave Doe behind. You stop at the gas station for cigarettes. Kidnapping is a stressful business after all. Was Heero already dead in your trunk, or did you kill him after you had a smoke?"

Duo only glared at him.

"It doesn't matter much. Either you killed him in the struggle at the motel, or you killed him after your pit stop and you disposed of the body somewhere between the gas station and Harrisburg. Then you went to work early so you could start lying to everyone to cover your tracks."

"Come on, WuFei," He tried to reason with him. "It's an orgy of evidence! That only happens when a person is being framed! If I were involved in this, would I leave a condom with my semen at the scene? Not to mention all the fingerprints?"

WuFei quirked an eyebrow. "Are you trying to say that your only defense is that if you would have done it, you would have done it better and we would never find out?"

Duo snorted. "I don't know about the others, but you definitely wouldn't know. You're not a very good cop."

The insult succeeded in getting a rise out of the proud agent. He straightened up in his chair and narrowed his black eyes at his suspect. "I am a good cop," He contended. "I am a good detective. All the evidence implicates you."

"And that's why you are not a good detective! Because you can't see the forest through the trees! You always get hung up on things like that, you draw premature conclusions and once you've made up your mind, you can't change it back."

"And what about you? The only reason you are a good detective is because you can think like a criminal! What does that say about you?"

Duo ignored the fact that the jab hit him dead-center in his insecurities and urged: "I know you can't see it, but you are wasting time with me. Heero is out there! You should be looking for him, and not be in here gloating because you think you finally have proof that you're a better cop than me."

"Don't worry. We have the best of the best out there looking for Yuy."

Duo looked up at him, hopeful.

WuFei grinned darkly. "Divers and cadaver dogs."

Without think Duo jumped out of his seat and threw his body over the table. Both men fell to the floor, with Duo on top of WuFei. He held onto his tie with one hand, pulling it tight around the man's neck, and beat him savagely with his free hand. He only managed to land two punches before WuFei caught his fist and flipped them over. Now that the Chinese man was on top he twisted his fingers into the front of Duo's button-up shirt and his pulled him up only far enough to slam him back down, causing Duo's shoulders and head to hit the floor. The pain disoriented him and he could only fight back weakly when WuFei's hands closed around his neck. Realizing he couldn't pry the man's fingers off his throat, he reached up and pulled on WuFei's tie so that the fabric would constrict his airway.

Both were red-faced and close to suffocating when Duo distantly heard the door open and suddenly WuFei was pulled off him and thrown into a corner. He gasped for air and coughed loudly.

"What the fuck are you two doing?!" Trowa yelled. "Are you crazy?!"

Duo scrambled up to his feet and tried to lunge at WuFei again but Trowa caught him and pushed him back to the other side of the room.

"Stop it! Both of you!"

"He's going to get Heero killed the way he's slacking off!" Duo accused, out of breath.

"Fuck you, Maxwell! You're the one stalling and obstructing the investigation!"

Trowa whistled sharply to get both their attention and silence them. "You," He pointed at WuFei. "Out. Now." He grabbed him by his upper arm and maneuvered him out of the room. He told Duo to take a seat and calm himself and then he let the door fall shut behind him.

The American heaved a sigh and did his best to straighten his clothes. Feeling hot all over, he rid himself of his jacket and then sat down again. He couldn't stop his legs from jiggling. Adrenaline was pumping through his body. He could really use a cigarette but it would be futile to ask.

He heard mumbling out in the hallway and surmised that Mill had come to talk to WuFei and Trowa. Duo buried his head in his hands. He knew he was messing things up, but he couldn't think straight. It had been foolish to attack WuFei, obviously he shouldn't have done that, but to hear the man tease him so casually with the likelihood that Heero was already dead made him lose control. He hadn't been thinking, he was just desperate to get out of that room and find his lover. It seemed like no one else was still focused on finding him. Not alive, at least. It infuriated him. He had lied to keep this team on the case because they were the best. He hadn't expected that his actions would unhinge the team in such a way that they might not be the best guys for the job after all.

The door opened and Milliardo entered, carrying two paper cups of water. He placed one of the cups in front of Duo and then he took his seat across from him.

Duo had expected the water to be a peace offering, but clearly it wasn't when Milliardo bit: "Well done. On the day you become a suspect, you decide to finally fight out that beef with Chang."

Duo glared at him. As wrong as it had been of him to attack the agent, WuFei definitely deserved a punch in the face for suggesting Heero was long dead. He resented that Mill appeared to be taking WuFei's side on the matter. "He got on my nerves," Duo shot back.

"You lie to one agent and you fight with another," Milliardo summed up.

Duo shrugged dismissively.

"How are we supposed to work this case if you keep getting in the way of the truth?"

"It's like I told Chang," He spat, "You're wasting your time with me. I didn't do anything. I'm not involved. You should be looking for Heero, not asking me stupid questions!" He pounded the table with his fists again, not caring that the water spilled from the cups. He had to make Mill understand somehow that they had to find Heero, or else Duo knew he would never be able to live with himself.

Milliardo tried to convince him that he had to talk to him, that he was their only lead to find Heero, whether or not he was guilty.

But Duo wasn't very susceptible to his logic. "Then you're being led astray! This approach is only going to lead you further away from actually finding Heero!"

"If you are innocent, it is a reasonable assumption that whoever took Yuy, took him to get at you. Innocent or not, you are the key to finding out what happened."

Although he agreed the kidnapping had to relate back to him somehow, Duo didn't believe that spilling the last of his well-guarded secrets, regarding his personal life, would help them in any way. He implored Mill to look into John Doe, he was certain he must have met him during one of his busts or undercover missions. If they could identify the John Doe, they could go banging on the doors of his known associates. But Milliardo wasn't about to relent and Duo chose the only option that he thought would force Milliardo to give up on this fruitless pursuit into his personal life and would get him on the right track. "I'm lawyering-up. I'm not saying anything until I get a lawyer in here. In the meantime you can go out and actually look for Heero." He jumped in his seat when the other agent hit the table and he noticed the determination in those ice-blue eyes.

"If you didn't do this and you want us to find Heero alive, we are your best friends," He advised him. "Because if you tell us your side of the story we might be able to prove your innocence and in the process find the person who is responsible and hunt them down to get Heero back safely."

Duo was rendered speechless. His heart was pounding.

"You want that? Right? You want Heero to be safe?"

Duo readily agreed: "Yes. Fuck, of course I do." His voice cracked as he spoke.

"Tell me the whole story, Duo," Milliardo urged.

It dawned on Duo that he had no choice but to trust his boss. With a sigh he resigned to Milliardo's behest and told him everything.


	3. Chapter 3

**Blue Divide**

_**Part 3** _

Milliardo didn't interrupt him, not even once, as he told him the entire story; everything there was to tell. He started with briefly recounting his past in foster care and in the orphanages, to make Mill understand that he hadn't been secretive about his identity because he didn't care for them or because he was some psycho-killer. Then he told him about how he had met Heero, embarrassed to admit he called a suicide-prevention-hotline. His face grew hotter still when he bit the bullet and told him about the change in their relationship, from friendly to sexual – without consulting Heero or considering his apparent wishes. He concluded the account with his activities from the night before, knowing how unbelievable the coincidences must sound to Mill: the fight, the vain threat to kill Heero, the cryptic text message, parking in the shadows behind the store for half an hour before going in and even cleaning out his car in the wee hours of the morning.

As he described everything that had happened, he finally realized just how bad it all looked and he knew that in any other case it would be considered a slam-dunk, so with a heavy heart he couldn't really blame WuFei, or anyone, for holding him responsible. He had opportunity, motive and evidence mounted against him. Any other dirt-bag would have been hauled off to the county jail for processing by now.

With vulnerable eyes he looked at Milliardo – the closest thing he had to a friend at the moment – and he begged him to understand and to believe in him, even though he realized he didn't deserve it. "I had nothing to do with his disappearance."

"I believe you," Milliardo breathed and he seemed just as surprised at his own words as Duo, but it was immediately followed by relief. He cleared his throat and consulted his notes. "So, you also think nobody had any reason to kidnap Heero other than to get back at you?"

Duo nodded.

Carefully, Milliardo said: "You do realize that there still hasn't been any contact. If this is someone trying to punish you – for whatever – the odds are-"

"The odds are that Heero is long dead," Duo interrupted and he clenched his jaws together and curled his limp hands into tight fists.

Milliardo agreed. "They would have reached out to taunt you, otherwise."

"Yeah," He croaked. "Is it true what WuFei said?" At Mill's frown he explained: "Do you really only have divers and cadaver dogs out looking for him?"

Mill shook his head. "You know WuFei's tactic, he likes to rile the suspects up. Officially, we are still treating this as a kidnapping, we are looking for a living person. But I do need you to realize that-"

"I know. I know. But I can't think about that. Even if it's stupid to be in denial like that."

The other sighed and after a pause he reached out and briefly wrapped a warm hand around Duo's trembling fist, hoping to call him. "I'm really sorry, Duo."

"I'm fine. I'll be fine," He asserted and he angrily wiped his hand by his eye, just in case a tear had spilled without his permission. "What now?"

Mill bit on his bottom lip. "I can't let you go, Duo. I believe that you had nothing to do with this, but with the evidence there is against you, we have to keep you downstairs in holding. I won't arrest you, but when the forty-eight hours are up and we have no other lead, the higher-ups may force me to book you and take you over to county."

Duo nodded in understanding. He wasn't about to fight the protocol any longer and obstruct the investigation. He was willing to cooperate, it was currently the only way for him to help them find Heero.

"I'll get you your old case files so you can continue looking through the mugshots. Perhaps you can ID John Doe through a visual search. The facial recognition program is coming up with nothing, but with half of his face missing, that might be an error."

"If he's in the files, I'll find him," Duo vowed.

He was escorted down to the basement and placed in one of the holding cells. Duo felt suddenly claustrophobic in the tight, concrete space. He took a seat on the bench that doubled as a narrow, uncomfortable bed and he wrung his fingers nervously. As promised he was brought his case files, dating as far back as four years. They arrived in large boxes and the officers stacked them in the corner for him. The room felt even more tiny, more cramped, now that about a quarter of the space was swamped with boxes. He took a moment to collect his cool and keep himself from hyperventilating, but he didn't allow himself too much time. As soon as he felt ready, he opened the first box and started leafing through the files, pausing to really scrutinize the mugshots and compare them with the picture of John Doe's face.

He was so focused on his task that he had no idea how long he had been working and with no window and having had his phone taken away from him, he had no concept of time. He was startled when the door to his cell opened and Trowa walked into the cell carrying a paper bag that smelled of spicy Thai food.

"What time is it?" Duo's stomach spontaneously started to growl once his nose picked up the mouth-watering scents. He opened the first carton contained and dug in with the plastic fork.

"Almost seven." Trowa crouched down on the floor and his emerald eyes scanned the papers that Duo had spread around himself.

Duo had a hard time swallowing his first bite as he did the math and realized Heero had been missing for about seventeen hours.

"Any luck?"

"No," He replied gruffly and washed his first bite of chicken down with a big gulp of water from the bottle Trowa had brought him. "You?"

Trowa fixed worried eyes on him. "I only have more bad news."

Duo felt like he was going to be sick.

"I went to your apartment this afternoon."

"Yeah?" Come on, spit it out!

"I found a bloodied shirt in the bathroom sink. The shirt is your size. The blood… looks to be Heero's. It matches his blood type that we pulled from his medical records."

Struggling to remain clinical and detached, Duo inquired: "How much blood?"

"A lot, but nothing… definitive."

He nodded, somewhat relieved.

"What are these files?" Trowa wondered, studying the chaos that surround Duo.

It looked like a mess, but the files were organized. "Since I was going through the old files looking for mugshots, I figured I might as well try to identify the cases that might be reason for revenge."

"You've had a lot of bad guys locked up, Duo. I imagine all of them will want revenge."

"Sure, sure. But for the sake of it, I narrowed it down to the more likely suspects. You see, this stack, that's cases where people had the motivation for revenge, but not the means, or balls, rather," He pointed at the largest stack, "These are the cases where someone involved had means and motive to get back at me," He grimaced, part of being an undercover cop meant you eventually had to betray the people that you had convinced we're your best friends and some of the guys had a particularly nasty reaction to it, "But kidnapping or- or-… otherwise, isn't their MO. Last but not least," He patted the smallest collection of files, "The guys from these cases; kidnapping and stuff is right up their alley and they made it clear that they wanted to fuck me up."

"But you don't recognize anyone in the mugshots?"

"No, but I figured John Doe could be a friend, or a hired help. So I need you to get me the files on all the known associates of these guys, including everyone involved in these two gangs." He handed him the files. "Hurry." Duo expected Trowa to promptly leave, but instead the agent lingered, looking hesitant. "What?" He asked with a fearful tone.

"The bloodied shirt…"

"Not this again," Duo growled. "I'm innocent, Tro! Obviously someone is trying to frame me."

"I know. And Peacecraft knows. Fuck, I think even Chang is starting to open up to the possibility. But it looks really bad; a bloodied shirt in your bathroom. There's no evidence of a break-in."

"You and I both know how easy it is to pick a lock with the right tools."

Trowa nodded. "I do but-… Whoever is framing you, they're doing a pretty good job. I just spotted the DA going up to Khushrenada's office."

Fuck, Duo cursed inwardly.

"Everyone is really eager to wrap this one up. They want to make the case go away, get it out of the media-"

"The media?"

"Some anonymous informant," Trowa rolled his eyes, "told a reporter that a state police officer was a suspect in the case. Every news outlet is going crazy on this one. They've already been blasting the force for being homophobic, for months now, saying that we don't look out for the gay community. And now they are saying that a cop is responsible for what they've labelled as a hate crime, they have your name and everything, and their spinning the story to make it seem like we are trying to cover it up to save our own asses."

"Fucking Hell."

"Peacecraft's sister was in here too, flipping out. She's pushing for a swift resolution to the case. She and the DA are convinced that even if you didn't do it, you look good enough for it."

Duo shot up. "They plan to pin it on me?"

"Don't worry. We're all on your side-"

"Don't worry?!" He exclaimed. "They want to cut the investigation short! Which means they also want to stop looking for Heero! Case closed, done deal!"

"Calm down," Trowa barked at him. "Peacecraft and Khushrenada got your back. I'm just giving you a head's up. And we're still all working the case, even WuFei. We're going to find Heero, Duo." He reached out and squeezed his shoulder as a show of support.

Duo nodded meekly and sat back down. He urged Trowa to hurry and get those additional files for him and he flinched when the agent locked the cell door behind him.

He stared at the mess of files on the floor and a thick, suffocating blanket of hopelessness settled over him and wrapped around him tightly, constricting his every breath. If Relena and the District Attorney had their way, he would get locked up and they would bury the investigation as quickly as possible to get a handle on the negative media attention. They believed Heero could no longer be saved and figured the only thing they could save at that juncture was their own asses. It wasn't the first time authorities were getting ready to throw someone under the bus to protect their reputation, as far as he understood it, that was 'all-in-a-day's-work' in politics, but only in the most extreme circumstance were they willing to offer one of their own officers on a silver platter to the incensed public. Nothing spoke to the imagination of the masses as much as a potentially crooked cop and it never failed to serve as a lightening-rod.

Trowa was quick to return with more case files. "This is everything." He put the boxes down with a grunt and then left Duo to it.

Duo worked tirelessly; reading case files and studying mugshots. But his search would prove to be futile. None of the men in the pictures matched the John Doe. Either they were looking in completely the wrong direction, or John Doe was an associate who had managed to keep his record clean. Whatever the case, it was a dead end.

He estimated that it was early in the morning by the time he realized his hours of work had been in vain. Heero had been forcibly taken from motel room 102 over twenty-four hours ago. If he had ever even made it alive out of whatever car he had been stuffed into in the parking lot, his chances of survival were slimming at a rapid, frightening pace. The odds of him being found alive were hurdling towards 'negligible'.

For the first time, he allowed himself to cry. He had been fighting it, afraid that once he would go to that emotional place he would lose his way in the maze and he would be a useless, bawling mess. But there was no fighting it any longer.

Heero could be long dead by now, he forced himself to acknowledge. His warm, supple body could be cold and rigid. His golden complexion could be white. His soft, pink lips could be blue. His vibrant, cobalt-blue eyes could be faded and grey.

And all of it would be Duo's fault. He was the one who let a nice, innocent guy get involved with an alcoholic cop with a predilection to get himself in trouble. He was the one who had decided their relationship would be purely physical. He was the one who had chosen the motel. He was the one who left him alone, when Heero begged him not to.

He might never get the chance to tell Heero that he was right. Duo was a coward. He had himself convinced that he stayed hidden in the closet for the right reasons, but if hiding your identity is hurting the people around you and is preventing you from living your live, no reason is good enough. Now that the secret was out, amidst this flurry of life-changing events, he realized how small and insignificant it was in the grand scheme of things. His sexuality had been a barrier between himself and everything and everyone around him his entire life and he had been hiding behind that barrier because he was scared – a coward – even though it never gave him any sense of security. It only made him all the more anxious, being so preoccupied with this secret. Everybody knew he was gay now and yet Milliardo and Trowa and even chief Khushrenada and WuFei were still on his side, without a single look or word of judgment. If they wanted to get rid of him because he was a fag, they were given the perfect opportunity – pressured even, by the District Attorney and the State Attorney General – and yet they still protected him and helped him to prove his innocence and to find his lover.

The epiphany only disheartened him even more; he might have gotten Heero killed because he was afraid of the veritable 'monster under the bed' – his childish fear could have cost Heero his life.

The bolt on his cell-door was unlocked and the door swung open. He expected it to be Trowa or Milliardo and was a little shocked to be faced with the statuesque Treize Khushrenada.

He jumped up. "Chief." He studied the man closely and noticed that in spite of his perfect hair and impeccable suit, he looked like he hadn't slept all night.

"No luck with the mugshots, I take it?"

He shook his head. "No, sir." He watched the tall man take a seat on the bench and fold his hands together. "Sir, do you have any news for me?" He asked with shaking breath.

"No, unfortunately I don't."

"To be honest, sir, at this point, no news is good news to me."

He nodded in understanding. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine," He lied and he could tell by the look in the chief's eyes that he didn't fall for the deception. "Trowa told me the media and Peacecraft's sister are urging you to close the case and arrest me."

"I have to be honest, Duo," He started ominously, "You look good for it. A murder conviction without a body is always tricky, but with the way things are I don't think any lawyer will have any trouble convincing a judge and a jury of your guilt. No offense."

"I know. It looks bad."

"What I mean to say is: if we don't find Heero, I don't think there is any way to prove your innocence and when your forty-eight hours are up, I either have to let you go or have you arrested and with the evidence available to us, you'll understand that the first of those options is not really an option."

"I know, sir. But I don't care what happens to me, I just want to find Heero."

Treize chuckled bitterly. "You will start to care after the first couple of years in a maximum security federal prison, for a crime you did not commit."

"I probably will, but right now I just want to find Heero," He repeated.

"I'm going to be very blunt right now and tell you that for me the opposite is true. After a few years I'm sure I will lose sleep over this case if we don't find mister Yuy, but right now I care only about the consequences to our department and that some of our past work might be undone."

Duo frowned at that. "Sir? What do you mean undone?"

"You are considered a persona non grata. Every lawyer worth his salt, who worked a case where your involvement was key in convicting a criminal, has been calling my office for more information because they seek to overturn rulings based on your witness-accounts and police work. They claim that now that you are 'a murderer' and possibly involved with one of the gangs you used to do undercover work for, you are not trustworthy and their clients should not go to jail based on evidence handled by you or your testimony."

A cold shiver went down Duo's spine.

"According to the DA over half a dozen serious criminals that we put away in the last two years have a good chance at getting off now that your reputation is besmirched. And their lawyers are badgering me to get some alone-time with you so they can put the screws on you."

Something in Duo's head clicked. A thought occurred to him; a new angle to approach the case which may very well be as useless as any other method that they had tried, but he had to follow-up. He asked: "Who called first?"

Treize shot him a quizzical look. Duo wasn't making any sense to him. "Is that relevant?"

"Probably not, but… humor me." He knelt on the floor by the case files, ready to scrummage through them.

"Dermail," The chief answered. "He's-"

"Quinze's lawyer."

"Mister Carnbee, yes."

Duo pulled the shortest stack of files towards him and sifted through the folders until he round the right one. The White Fang bust was his last case before he went to rehab. The recentness of it made sense. Quinze was in prison awaiting trial. It would take Duo's testimony to get the crook the sentencing he deserved. If Dermail could manage to persuade the judge to dismiss the case, Quinze would be released immediately, so he had motive – aside from the fact that Duo's betrayal had royally pissed off the proud gang leader. 'Disappearances' were right up White Fang's alley too; kidnapping for ransoms and getting rid of rival or defected gang members were par for the course.

"What are you thinking?"

"Well," He scratched his head and went through the mugshots yet again, as he explained absentmindedly: "What if this is a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of deal? What if the plan was not just to make me miserable, as revenge, but also to get Quinze out of prison in a single move?"

"That could be true for a lot of them. Quinze isn't the only one who benefits from your fall from grace."

"But his lawyer was the first to call. Perhaps because he got a heads-up."

Treize shook his head at the speculation. "White Fang fell apart. Members split up into smaller factions or joined other gangs, all renouncing Quinn Carnbee as their leader."

"Yeah, but all it takes is a couple of loyal fucks to pull this off."

Khushrenada grimaced. "It's a stretch."

"It's a lead," He insisted.

"Dermail did call hours before the others and was very well prepared…" He mused aloud.

"We need to look at calls Quinze made from prison!" Duo spoke in a hurry. His body was energized with a new surge of hope. "If he arranged this, he had to have placed a couple of calls to old friends and he probably called Dermail sometime during the past couple of days to tell him to get ready."

Khushrenada got up. "I'll get your team on it. Sit tight."

"Sir!" He called as the tall man was about to leave. "Please, let me come upstairs. I can be of use!"

Treize shook his head definitively. "If word ever got out that you worked on this case while you were still officially a suspect – and the only suspect – we will all hang. I'll make sure Peacecraft keeps you informed."

Duo stared at the door as it was shut and flinched at the sound of the lock falling into place. A panic swept over him. It wasn't easy to relinquish control like that in an investigation. He was used to being Mill's right-hand-man, being on top of everything and delegating work. This was the most important case and he was forced to stand on the side-lines and wait for news, keeping himself busy searching through mugshots without any hope of his efforts actually being of any help.

With breathing exercises he had been taught at rehab he managed to calm himself down and he sat on the bench. With his eyes closed he thought about his undercover time in the White Fang biker gang, hoping he might spontaneously remember a detail that could be of use.

He had infiltrated the gang before, as a low-level enforcer, alongside Milliardo – then known to the gang as Zechs Merquise. 'Zechs' worked his way up in the ranks but Quinze remained untouchable. In an attempt to force Quinze's hand and tempt him to do something stupid to get revenge, Duo exposed 'Zechs' as an undercover cop, dangling him in front of Quinze like bait. Unfortunately, Quinze didn't fall for it and the mission was cut short. The DA was pretty pleased that they had gotten enough dirt on three of the lieutenants to get them locked up. Duo's character, 'Duo Maximillian' – or 'D-Max', much to his horror – simply disappeared.

Thanks to his previous work in the gang, he was the ideal cop to send in undercover again for what was supposed to be a quickie. Going undercover wasn't really part of his job description any more, since he had made detective, but he was willing to turn his life upside down again for a couple of months to get Quinze. The biker gang was waging war with a rival and in the ugly mess of their own creation Quinze could slip up and they could finally pin his crimes on him. He ended up going undercover for seven months, much longer than planned, but it was worth it. Quinze trusted 'D-Max' and boasted about kills he had ordered and people he had tortured. The evidence they had on him was mostly circumstantial, but in combination with Duo's testimony of the stories Quinze had told him, it was enough to arrest him and have the case go to trial.

Quinze resented that his own arrogance and vanity had been his downfall. He didn't go without a fight. When they came to arrest him, assisted by a SWAT team, some of his guys opened fire on them and Duo and another officer got shot. Luckily neither got seriously injured.

Quinze was smart enough not to pick up a rifle himself, but framing Duo for a crime was more elegant than Duo thought him to be capable of. The more he thought about it, the more it didn't make sense. It appeared that the men who had come to take Heero had completely lucked out that Duo's actions happened to implicate him. Aside from planting a bloodied shirt in his bathroom, they hadn't actively made an effort to frame him and the shirt felt more like an afterthought. And someone had released his name to the press, involving the media wasn't an apparent part of White Fang's wheelhouse.

WuFei was right, the reason Duo was a good detective was because he could get into the mindset of a criminal and not just the average criminal, but any specific type of criminal. He had gotten to know Quinze very well. Kidnapping Heero in the dead of night, speeding off with screeching tires and leaving an accomplice and potential witnesses, fit with everything he knew about the way the gang operated under Quinze's command. Breaking into his apartment – the only time evidence was actually planted against him, as opposed to the evidence being an unfortunate coincidence – and leaking his name to the media to force the authorities into pinning this on him in their hurry to sweep it under the rug, was an entirely different approach and unlike anything White Fang had ever attempted.

Quinze was getting help from someone, he concluded.

The White Fang leader had ordered the last remaining men loyal to him to kidnap Heero. Quinze was the kind of man who believed blackmail could solve any problem, his plan had likely been to have Heero kidnapped to coerce Duo to retract his testimony and let the case crumble in on itself.

Someone else –someone with inside knowledge of the case – saw the direction in which it was all headed. They watched the coincidental evidence pile up, implicating Duo as the guilty party and this person decided to fine-tune the original plan and take steps to frame Duo and put pressure on the case to ensure that, in the ensuing frenzy, discrepancies that could acquit Duo would be conveniently overlooked.

He wondered if Dermail was responsible for the more sophisticated attempt to actually frame him for what had happened. Dermail was a piece of work; he was the lawyer for more scumbags like Quinze, as well as crooked politicians. At the Bureau Dermail was known as the 'DIY-lawyer', he fixed things, although the nickname was misleading because no one ever believed he did the dirty work himself. He was the kind of man with all the wrong friends in all the right places, helping inconvenient lawsuits be swept under the rug. But Dermail wouldn't have been able to keep track of the developments in the investigation that ended up pointing to Duo as the prime suspect. If he was the one planting evidence and calling reporters, he still had to have relied on someone else to feed him the inside information.

He would have to wait for insight into the phone records. Until someone came to his cell to keep him in the loop, he was left to worry about the implications of these two different approaches.

Quinze's plan required Heero to be kept alive and used as leverage, whereas the plan to frame him benefitted from Heero's body being discovered in a way that would further implicate Duo. He reasoned that Heero was probably being kept alive as a back-up plan for now, in case the framing would fail, then they could go back to the initial idea of blackmailing him into silence. However, once it would be clear that framing him had been effective and all that was needed was the final push – a body being discovered – Heero would be of more use to the kidnappers dead.

Tomorrow afternoon, his forty-eight hours would be up and as it stood the police couldn't let him go, they would have to arrest him, seeing as he was still the prime suspect and the public was hungry for his blood. He knew that when that would happen, the shift would occur and the kidnappers would abandon plan A in favor of plan B.

Heero will be killed and his body will be found in a couple of weeks, enough time will have passed so the estimated time of death would roughly match the night of his disappearance and he will probably have been shot to death with a 45 millimeter Gen4 Glock, the same kind of handgun Duo carried, but there would no round so no ballistics – White Fang always shot their victims in the neck.

Duo was brought breakfast and then later lunch by a guard. He asked for Milliardo both times but all he ever got in return was: "He's busy, but I'll see what I can do." He knew it was a good thing that Mill was too busy to come downstairs and have a chat with him, but he was anxious to tell his boss about his theory and have them look into it. He had to convince them to get him out of that damned holding cell and especially not book him tomorrow or Heero will have outlived his purpose.

The one to bring him his dinner was Milliardo. Finally.

He accepted the tray with food from the fourth floor kitchen but he set it aside with complete disinterest. "Tell me."

"You should eat first," Mill suggested, nodding at the tray. "The guard told me you haven't eaten a thing for breakfast and lunch either."

"I can't eat," He stated definitively. "Did you look into Quinze's call history?"

"Yes. We've been digging through people's phone-records all day, not all of them obtained in a strictly legal fashion." He flipped open a folder and reviewed: "Quinze called his lawyer the day before the yesterday. It looks like you were right. It could be a coincidence, but it appears that he gave Dermail a heads-up."

He nodded eagerly. Finally the investigation was going somewhere. "Did he make any other calls?"

"Hmhm," He turned a page. "The last couple of weeks he's made calls to one particular number. We traced it to a Gatland Black." Milliardo produced a photo from the file and stared at it for a moment before turning it to face Duo. "I'm not sure, but he could be our John Doe."

Duo took the picture and practically pressed his nose against the image. "It's him."

"It's an old DMV photo, with the state our John is in, we can hardly be sure…"

"It's him. I'm sure," Duo emphasized.

"How?"

"Because I've seen him before. I've seen him at a couple of White Fang meetings when I was under." Duo spoke hurriedly, excited by the development.

"It's a dead-end though. We have no records on him, no known associates. We checked out his place, of course, but there was nothing there."

"It's not a dead-end! I know who he usually partners-up with. They were a regular 'dynamic duo'. They could have been working together for this job!"

"Alright, what is his name?"

Duo blinked. He didn't know. His heart sank into his boots. "Fuck, I don't know, they called them 'black and blue'."

"Cute. You didn't recognize 'Blue' in any of the mugshots?"

He shook his head hopelessly.

"Then he probably has a clean record as well. Two guys without a criminal record are a good card for a criminal like Quinze to have up his sleeve for stuff like this."

"Speaking of that, I think it was never Quinze's plan to frame me. I think Quinze only wanted to blackmail me with Heero, he lacks the imagination for anything else."

Milliardo nodded. "I was starting to think the same thing, it was too much like a 'happy accident'."

"Someone else took notice of the turn of events, that my actions made me look guilty and they decided, after the fact, that it would be an even better idea to frame me." He added poignantly: "I think it's someone closely involved in the investigation."

Milliardo chuckled darkly. "Hell, Duo, you're locked up in a cell and still you manage to beat me to it, huh?"

With a frown Duo questioned: "What do you mean?"

"Noin helped us dig a little further – off the books – and we had a peek at Dermail's phone records. Guess who he has been on the phone with three times the day before yesterday."

Knowing Mill didn't actually expect him to start guessing, he waited wordlessly.

"Dorothy Catalonia."

The name didn't instantly ring a bell and at Duo's obvious frown Milliardo explained:

"Relena's Communication Liaison. She's been keeping tabs on the investigation, calling every other hour to Treize and myself to get more information. She knew everything about the investigation as soon as it happened. I think she had been feeding Dermail the information and pushing my sister to demand your arrest."

"Holy shit."

"Indeed. We always suspected Dermail had strategic friends all over the legal system and it seems Dorothy is one of them. We also found out Dermail called one of his druggie-goons and we picked him up for questioning this afternoon. He admitted to planting the bloodied shirt in your apartment on Dermail's orders. None of this will hold up in court because we didn't go through the proper legal channels to get a hold of Dermail's phone records – God and WuFei won't let me forget it-"

Duo snickered.

"But we might have just found a single, loose thread to an entire woven blanket of spies working for Dermail that he has been relying on to keep his rich and powerful buddies out of prison all these years. Because he's not even that great of a lawyer."

"What about Heero? Did the guy say anything about Heero?"

Mill shook his head. "His only job was planting the shirt. But I think that if we keep pulling on this thread we might find him. We're doing everything that we can, okay? You have to trust us."

"I do. I do trust you."

Milliardo offered him a smile and placed his hands on Duo's shoulders. "Why didn't you trust us before? Why didn't you trust me?"

"Because I'm a coward," He said and he chuckled bitterly.

"When all of this is over, I want us to be friends. Real friends. Is that okay?"

Duo nodded and he bit on his lower lip to stop it from trembling.

Milliardo pulled him into a hug.

Stifling a sob, Duo joked: "Does that mean you will finally admit that you have a crush on Noin?"

The tall, blond-haired man pulled back and shot him a quizzical look. "What?"

"Come on. You've been in love with her for years and I know something happened at Lando's retirement party."

Milliardo stammered but was unable to produce a convincing lie.

"Just tell her how you feel, okay? Don't run away from it, you'll regret it. Trust me."

He nodded, understanding what Duo meant. "I'm going to get back to work. Hang tight."

"Get me out of here, Mill. Please. Let me help!"

"Not yet, Duo. We can't afford to fuck this up. Some really powerful people are breathing down our necks, if we make even the tiniest mistake they will force us to arrest you. I told you, you have to trust us."

"Yeah…" Duo sighed as he was left behind in his tiny cell once more. He sat down and took as many bites from the meal Milliardo had brought him as he could stomach, which weren't very many. He did gratefully drink the can of soda, the fizzy drink helped subdue his nausea and the sugar had an energizing effect on him.

Duo leaned his back against the wall and forced his eyes closed to get a little bit of rest after not sleeping the entire night. The investigation was moving forward and reaching a point where the smallest discovery could lead to finding Heero. He kept wiping his hands on his thighs, the anxiety made his palms sweaty.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Mill or the others to handle this investigation and given Duo's current, emotional state they were probably better equipped to solve the case anyway. But he wanted to help as a way to redeem himself and to amend the mistakes he had made in the way he had disregarded Heero. He had mistreated him as he ignored the beautiful opportunity to have actually have a life worth living. Heero could have been the best thing to have ever happened to him and yet he had purposefully stopped it from happening and that had been a mistake. He wanted nothing more than to take the other man into his arms and just let himself be overwhelmed by the fresh scent of his hair, that reluctant smile and those eyes that only saw the good in him, not the bad. Heero knew of the darkest parts of him and still he was unafraid. Heero knew of the ugliest parts of him and still he loved him. Duo knew he had done nothing to deserve it – to deserve him – but he would; he wasn't going to be a coward anymore.

He stretched out on the bench and closed his eyes. He calmed his breathing and took himself back to the time he spent undercover in the biker gang. He wanted nothing more than to remember the nights he had spent with Heero, but those memories were of no help. He had to focus if he ever wanted to make new memories with the Japanese man.

He had met the duo known as 'Black and Blue' only a couple of times. Quinze limited their interaction with the rest of the group to keep the police from finding out they were part of the gang. Their 'clean' status – no criminal record – made them a valuable asset. Quinze made sure to protect that asset and they were allowed more fuck-ups than any other member of the crew. As a result, they were particularly loyal to the gang leader, so it made sense that they would still be willing to help the imprisoned and disgraced man even after the gang had fallen apart. Quinze and the duo had a symbiosis that was equally beneficial to both parties. They did the personal jobs for Quinze that he didn't want the police to know about, so nothing could trace back to him and in turn he gave them respect, cars and cash.

The 'Blue' half of the twosome was a shorter, very muscular guy, with a complexion that suggested a Latin descent. He was mean as piss, that's what Duo remembered about him mostly, listening to the other guys talk about them. Of course there was some resentment, the other bikers recognized the favoritism, that they deemed unfair. They used to trash talk about 'Black and Blue', saying that their motor cycles weren't up to snuff and that they couldn't ride for shit. In a biker gang, that was about the most offensive insult, because everybody measured masculinity based on their bikes and their skills to ride them – 'How you ride your bike says more about what kind of man you are than how you ride your bitch', that's how one of them put it.

In any case, 'Blue' seemed to take issue with his lack of popularity; he was short-tempered and vicious. It didn't surprise Duo that, of the two of them, Heero had managed to take out Black, but not 'Blue'. Black was big and intimidating but cumbersome and slow, in every sense of the word, that much was instantly apparent from watching him from across the clubhouse. 'Blue' was different, with an obvious chip on his shoulder he felt like had a lot to prove and he compensated his size with violence. Quinze would sometimes complain to Duo that he had 'gone rogue' or 'went ape-shit crazy'. Not that Quinze minded the man taking his anger out on one of their victims, but he was worried about them leaving physical evidence. The man hadn't been wrong to fear that, on his last mission 'Blue' left about two hundred pounds of physical evidence behind in the heat of things: his partner.

Utilizing a mental technique they applied on other witnesses when trying to solve a challenging case, he envisioned himself in the clubhouse, standing at Quinze's side, trying to figure out what he was really saying to one of his lieutenants when they were talking in a code he hadn't yet fully mastered. Black and 'Blue' were there that day. When it was time for them to leave, 'Blue' came to Quinze to show his respect, patting him on the shoulder before walking out and the only distinct feature Duo remembered about him was the pungent smell that hung around him. He was always smoking cigarettes and chewing nicotine gum at the same time. The cigarette hung loosely between his lips, sticking to the moist skin and the gum was rolling around in his mouth. It was a disgusting habit to curb his hyperactivity, hastily smacking his mouth to consume the nicotine in the gum and dragging non-stop on a cigarette simultaneously.

It had scared Duo to see how bad a nicotine-addiction could get and he had almost quit smoking on the spot, it was the only thing he could think about all day after being exposed to that smell and the awful smacking sound of that mouth as it worked that piece of gum. If 'Blue' smoked and chewed gum as rigorously throughout the day as he did in those couple of minutes Duo had been studying him, he must go through two packs of each a day.

He shot up. "Well, fuck!" He exclaimed and he immediately scrambled to his feet and started pounding on the steel door, calling out the guard's name. "Patrick! Patrick!"

It took forever but the guard finally responded, opening the hatch in the door to glare at him.

"Can you please get agent Milliardo Peacecraft down here for me?" He begged. "I know how to find Heero!"

"Who? What?"

"Just tell him! Call him to get his ass down here!"

Patrick shook his head at him and shut the hatch. Thinking he was being ignored Duo was about to start slamming his palms against the door again but then the heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie and Patrick asked one of his security colleagues to get agent Peacecraft.

Duo paced back and forth in the small room, only three steps each direction, as he waited impatiently for his boss to come downstairs. When it was taking too long he opened the White Fang file again and searched for a list of properties owned by Quinze and other prominent members of the gang. Those homes and warehouses served as bases of operation for the gang's illegal activities. He had been to a couple of them himself; drug-dens and safe-houses. Knowing the case inside and out he crossed out the buildings that Quinze sold off after White Fang fell apart and he narrowed the list down further by eliminating locations that were too far away. He ended up with a list of eleven properties, ranging from a large factory off the highway to a small cabin in the redwood forest, each one was officially marked as abandoned, but they were the most logical place to keep a kidnapping victim.

The door opened and Milliardo stepped inside. "What going on? Patrick said you know where Heero is?"

"No! But I know how to find him!" He handed him the list and tapped the piece of paper excitedly. "He has to be at one of these locations and I know how to find out which one!"

"Duo-"

"No, Mill, let me talk! Look, I was trying to remember more stuff about this character that always worked with Black that would help us track him down-"

"Duo-"

"Zechs, please, shit!" He continued in a hurry before Mill would interrupt him again: "This guys has a serious nicotine addiction. We need to call the gas stations and convenience stores closest to these locations and ask if a Latino-looking guy has come by, today or yesterday, buying cigarettes as well as nicotine gum. A store clerk might remember because it's a pretty odd combination!"

"Duo! Fuck! Shut up for a minute will you?"

Duo reeled back.

Milliardo glanced down at the list and shook his head. "I've already sent uni's to each and everyone one of these places. Normally we wouldn't be able to spare the manpower, but we've been hitting a dead-end so…" He sighed and looked apologetic as he concluded: "The places are abandoned."

"Even the factory? Did they really check the factory? Because that's a big place!" Duo pressed on.

"Our guys checked the factory, Duo. There was no-one there." His voice was gentle and careful, aware that he was bringing bad news.

Defeated, he dropped back down onto the bench and he stared at his limp, useless hands. "I thought…"

With a sigh Milliardo sat down next to him. "I know. It's okay. It would have been a good lead on any other case, but this one is different."

Duo looked up at him.

The other agent smiled sadly. "Duo, someone you love is missing, is in danger. When bad guys mess with a good cop, he messes with all of us. I have every guy in our department working the case and a dozen state troopers have been assisting us, they have been out all day checking up on every tiny lead."

"And they don't care that he is my 'faggot lover'?" Duo asked bitterly.

"Well, I didn't tell everyone, because it's none of their business," Mill admitted, "But the guys that do know, they don't give a fuck." He chuckled. "When this is all over, you owe a lot of guys a beer. And Noin too."

"Fuck." He choked out a laugh.

"I'm sorry if I ever made you feel that I would think less of you if you told me that you were gay," Mill spoke poignantly. "I know there have been some inappropriate jokes, from a lot of us, and that wasn't right."

"It's fine. Most of those jokes were mine anyway." He made a face. "Well, mine and WuFei's. He's been pretty outspoken about 'fags on the force' in the past."

"WuFei doesn't think less of you now that he knows you are gay."

Duo raised his eyebrows.

"He thinks less of you because he thinks your attitude and method are a disgrace to the force," He laughed and shook his head.

Duo let out another laugh but then a tear rolled down his cheek and he quickly buried his face in his hands to keep Milliardo from seeing.

Sympathetic to his pain and despair, Milliardo lay a hand on his shoulder and the small gesture made Duo sob.

"He's dead, isn't he?" He wailed. His emotions over-powered his self-conscious need for control.

Deciding that a lie would be useless, Milliardo simply agreed: "Probably."

Duo scrubbed his face with his hands to wipe away the tears and with red eyes he regarded his boss. "Promise me, Mill," He started with a strangled voice, "That you'll take me out there with you when you track this son of a bitch down."

Milliardo nodded reluctantly.

"And promise me that if Heero is dead, you'll let me kill the motherfucker responsible. Let me shoot this guy between the eyeballs."

"You know I can't let you do that, Duo."

"He'll deserve it."

"I know." He glanced down at his watch. "I have to get back to work."

"Let me come upstairs with you," Duo begged. "Please. I just want to call those gas stations and stores, just to be sure."

"Duo, it's the middle of the night-"

"Then I'll start with the ones that are open 24/7."

He reminded him: "You're still a suspect."

"And everyone knows that is bullshit!" Duo argued. "Mill, the longer I'm here, the worse Heero's odds get. If there is no progress in the case, I'll be arrested tomorrow afternoon and as soon as the media gets a picture of me being hauled out of this building in handcuffs, Heero is dead! Let me help. Don't make me spend another night in here, twiddling my thumbs!"

Milliardo looked to the side and seemed ready to shoot him down.

Duo understood his reluctance. Mill could catch a lot of heat if things went wrong and it wasn't his intention to get him trouble. Not any more than he already had, that is. He only intended to help the case, to help Heero, and he couldn't do that sitting in a holding cell, slowly going crazy waiting to have a bomb dropped on him.

Then the agent said: "Yeah, you know what? Fuck it. Come on."

Relieved and determined Duo got up and followed Mill out of the cell. Patrick shot them a questioning look but decided not to voice his concerns, they were obvious anyway.

Stepping into the bullpen Duo had never been more self-conscious. Every agent turned to stare at him when he stepped onto the floor. He was aware of how awful he must look. His clothes disheveled and torn in places from his fight with WuFei. His braid partly undone with whisks of hair sticking out. His face haggard, showing his extreme exhaustion and emotional turmoil. With tight mouth and slight frown he straightened his shoulders and marched to his desk. It was the first time many of them were seeing him as a gay man and he wanted to command the same kind of respect as before and not let them think that he was weak – even though he was weak at the moment, a mere shadow of himself. He felt like a wounded animal that shouldn't show it's physical limitations or else it would simply be preyed upon.

But then he realized it was the middle of the night and everyone there was working through the night to find Heero and he felt shitty for reverting back into his old behavior where he felt he had to hide his emotional truth to look strong. So instead he nodded at them in silent gratitude, offering an uncomfortable, apologetic smile before sitting down.

"Really?" WuFei turned to Milliardo. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

"It's fine. Technically, he's still in our custody."

Duo jumped when he felt hands land on his shoulders and he looked up to find Trowa standing behind him.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just need to help."

He nodded. "Mill said you knew where Heero was?"

Duo grimaced at the miscommunication and how mistaken his earlier exuberance had been. "No. I- I just thought I had figured out a way to find him. I remembered that the guy Gatland Black pairs up with is a serious nicotine-addict; smoking cigarettes and chewing nicotine gum. I thought tracking those purchases would lead us to one of Quinze's properties."

"But we already checked those out."

"Yeah, I know…"

WuFei peered around his desktop monitor with a deep frown. "The guy that has Yuy both smokes and chews nicotine gum?"

"The guy I think has Heero, yeah." He shrugged dismissively. "I thought it would be a rare enough combination of purchases-"

"It is!" WuFei exclaimed.

Duo, Trowa and Milliardo gazed at the Chinese man expectantly.

"When I was at the gas station where Duo stopped for cigarettes," WuFei started to explain, "I had to watch through a couple of minutes of footage before Duo showed up. And, seriously, about two minutes before Duo walked into the store there was a guy at the cash register paying for gas and purchasing a pack of nicotine gum and asking the clerk for cigarettes! I remember it because it was so odd."

Duo got up from his chair and leaned over WuFei. "What did he look like?"

"Short. Broad shoulders in a muscle T-shirt. And Latino."

Duo doubled over. That was him! And Duo had been right there! He had been parked behind the store and that single car that passed behind him and headed for the pumps must have been the car Heero was in! He was right there!

Milliardo took over. "Did the gas station have camera's monitoring the pumps?"

"Yeah." A lightbulb went on in WuFei's head. "We'll have his license plate number!" He moved his mouse to open a program on his computer. "The clerk sent me all the footage from that night, I'll have his picture and his plate number in a couple of minutes."

Trowa guided Duo back to his chair. "Sit down. Before you pass out."

"I was there, Trowa," He mumbled.

"I know. But you couldn't have known."

He nodded numbly but Trowa's words didn't make him feel any less shitty.

Within a couple of minutes WuFei yelled-out: "Got it!" They showed Duo the images from the store cameras and he confirmed that the man in the video was the man he had seen at the White Fang clubhouse with Black. WuFei pulled up the video of the car parked by the gas pump. The license plate was easily legible and the Chinese agent got to work while the other three analyzed the footage. They could see someone sitting in the backseat of the car, but all they could see was the back of a head, titled to one side, almost resting on the shoulder. It was Heero and he was out cold – Duo dared to hope he wasn't already dead at that point – and he was probably made to look like a sleeping passenger.

WuFei had another Eureka!-moment and presented them all with a name:

"Benicio Luiz."

B. Luiz.

'Blue'.

As hypothesized, his record was clean, he was a supposedly upstanding citizen. He owned two properties, a house in Harrisburg and a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Officially, they had to hit both locations simultaneously so they had to spread their manpower, but it was obvious the cabin was a safe bet. If Luiz and Heero were at either of those two places, they would be in the privacy of the cabin.

Milliardo purposefully didn't inform Khushrenada or any of their superiors of the progress. Without any real evidence, they hadn't moved in on Dorothy Catalonia yet and they weren't sure who they could trust. Milliardo, Trowa, WuFei and Duo would head West for the cabin and Noin's team would go to the outskirts of Harrisburg to search the house.

The teams were downstairs in the armory, putting on bullet-proof vests and strategizing, when WuFei approached Duo.

Before the Chinese man could say anything, Duo defended his involvement in the bust. "I need to do this WuFei. And Mill already promised me, so don't even try-" He fell silent when his gaze landed on his gun – his Glock – being handed to him by the agent.

"If you're going to come in with us, you need to have this."

He accepted the pistol. He hadn't expected to be allowed to carry a weapon. He figured Mill would object to it because he might seek revenge and he had expected WuFei wouldn't trust him with a firearm since he was still, officially, a suspect in the case.

"When I'm out in the field, Sally feels better knowing you have my back," He explained, as stern and unyielding as ever.

"Thank you," He spoke reverently.

"I mean, I still think you're a shitty detective, but you are the best shot."

Duo chuckled. "I was about to say the same to you. But I'm honored to have your back."

"Good. Don't shoot me with that," He nodded at the handgun.

"Don't worry," Duo holstered the weapon. "If I ever try to kill you, I'll choke you with your own, hideous tie. Again."

"Ready?" Mill eyed the gun on Duo's belt warily but didn't say anything, hoping that Duo would know better than to use it in the manner he had proposed earlier to enable his revenge.

The two agents who were normally at odds nodded in unison.

"We'll head to the address in the suburbs and wait for you guys to get in position," Noin said in her usual, no-nonsense tone.

The teams separated, climbing into black SUV's in the parking lot and going in opposite directions.

Trowa was behind the wheel, flooring the gas pedal. Milliardo was in the front passenger seat but sat turned around and strategized with WuFei. Duo paid them all little attention. He watched the streetlamps as they sped down the highway and when they turned onto a dark, gravelly road heading deeper into the woods he forced himself to look at his own reflection in the black window. His face was a ghostly pale, his eyes equally lifeless. He wouldn't just be saving Heero, he would be saving himself.

They stopped half a mile down the dirt-road from the house so their approach would be stealthy and coordinated with Noin's team before moving forward, inching up the driveway towards the cabin. Milliardo signaled that he and Trowa would go through the front and Duo and WuFei would take the back.

With his weapon drawn, Duo fell in step behind the agent, stepping in his footprints in the mud as they circled the house. His heart was pounding and blood was rushing through his ears. He was sure his thundering heartbeat would give away their position. When both duos were in position at the doors they went inside. WuFei used his powerful legs to kick the door in and the two men stormed into the house, searching every dark room with the flashlight they held next to their handguns.

"Clear!" WuFei called when the kitchen and den turned out empty.

"Clear!" Said Trowa when he found the hallway, bathroom and bedroom to be abandoned as well.

"Fuck!"

"Duo, calm down," Milliardo urged.

"He's not here!"

"We can see that, Duo!" He bellowed in response. "Let's search the cabin for clues while we wait for Noin's call."

They flicked on the lights. There was nothing useful to be found in the cabin. No one had been there in months, it seemed. Everything was covered in a film of dust and cobwebs occupied every corner.

Then Trowa, who was in the bedroom, called: "I got something!"

Duo rushed into the bedroom and he didn't see anything out of the ordinary until he followed Trowa's pointing finger to the ground, to the disturbed dust on the floor. He followed the trail to the chair in the corner. There were marks in the dust by the legs, the chair had been moved and very recently. He studied the chair closely and noted one of the wooden armrest had been nearly snapped off and he could imagine the wood breaking when someone tied down to it tried to escape. And then Trowa pointed to a corner of the rug that had been flipped over revealing clean, dust-free wood.

"They were here," Duo was sure of it.

"Looks like they got into another fight. Heero is a feisty thing, huh?"

Duo couldn't help but smirk. He remembered the two of them slamming into doors and walls, hitting their heads on the headboard, tearing clothes off each other and scratching and biting, snarling and cursing. "Yeah."

"Where would they have gone? And why would they have even left in the first place?" WuFei wondered.

Milliardo excused himself when his phone rang and mouthed: 'It's Noin'.

Duo knew she was calling only to inform him they weren't at the house either. A suburban house was a stupid place to keep a hostage. These guys weren't rocket scientists but they definitely knew better.

"Maybe Dermail hooked him up with a more secure place?" He suggested. "We should go back to the station and look into what kind of property Dermail has access to in the region."

With no other options available to them, that's what they did, even though they were exhausted and increasingly hopeless. On the way back to Harrisburg the unspoken truth hung heavily in the car, but none of his team members was willing to say it out loud. Luiz could have killed Heero at the cabin and buried his body out in the woods somewhere. But Duo couldn't give up and what kept him going was the thought that Quinze would never let Luiz or Dermail waste such a valuable hostage before he was absolutely certain he had outlived his purpose and not until Duo was officially arrested would that be the case. Quinze knew that his reputation could still be cleared and if that were to happen his case would go to trial after all. At least, he hoped Quinze was smart enough to keep his back-up plan.

When they arrived at the station Noin was already there, waiting for them in the armory where they stripped off their bullet proof vests.

As Duo walked into the bullpen he noted, with dread, the clock on the wall. It was nearly morning which meant Heero had been missing for over forty-eight hours.

They looked into the property owned by Dermail and by Dorothy, to cover their bases. Dorothy Catalonia only had her downtown apartment and they hypothesized she was only involved to the extent of being an informant. Dermail, as a fixer, was the one who had been given the responsibility and Quinze was one of his best clients, surely deserving a more personal touch; it would be someplace he had control over but was sure wouldn't be investigated.

The list was long. Dermail had many industrial and residential buildings in his name. Technically, his name was on all the leases, but only because part of the services he offered was signing paperwork that his criminal clients didn't want to sign themselves, so many of them had him purchase real-estate for them. Whenever there was a bust Dermail would claim them to be squatters and he was never linked to them.

The team only managed to narrow the list down to the twenty-three most likely options. It was too much ground to cover, especially given the time constraint – in a few hours the DA would come marching into the office demanding Duo's arrest.

Milliardo instructed a handful of state troopers to check out as many of the addresses as possible. In the meantime they put out a BOLO on Benicio Luiz and the team would apply the method Duo had suggested before: they looked up all convenience stores close to the possible hide-outs and asked around for a man who had come by to purchase cigarettes and nicotine gum. It was a long list and for many stores they had to talk to several employees before they could rule out that he had been there. And even if all stores close to a locations did not get a visit from Luiz, they still couldn't cross that location off the list. He had been on the move from the cabin to the new location and he could have stopped at any given place for a supply to last him a couple of days.

It was nearly noon and the state troopers had only cleared nine properties. The team was getting agitated when their phone calls turned out pointless every time.

Noin stormed into the open area and before she could say anything, Mill scolded her protectively: "I thought I told you to go home and get some sleep!"

"I know! I know!" She sat down on the corner of Duo's desk. "I think I have something."

Everyone looked at her sharply.

"I was looking through the list of addresses for these properties owned by Dermail and some of them had phone numbers listed as well and I recognized one of them!" She placed two lists on the desk, one was the list of the properties, the other was Dermail's phone record. She had highlighted the matching numbers in neon yellow. "Dermail called this landline number. He called to this place!"

"So? He has friends doing business on these properties," Milliardo supplied.

"Yeah, but I think he has been pretty consumed with this kidnapping-ordeal the past two days," She shot back. "But of course I took into account that it might just be one of the drug-dens run by one of his buddies, but I looked it up and it's one of those futuristic mansions, in the middle of nowhere, and it's being renovated. I looked up the permits and the place has been stripped bare, down to the concrete. He has someone holed up in that place and he had to call landline because cell phone reception is spotty up there, at best."

"Or he called the construction crew…"

"It's a Sunday," She rebuffed.

"So it's an overzealous construction crew working overtime…"

She leaned in closer to the blond agent. "I get it okay. You've reached a point in the investigation when it's hard to believe you might have actually found something, but I'm telling you: we've found something. It's only about forty five minutes North of Luiz' cabin."

Milliardo looked at his team members one by one.

"We should go check it out," Duo said with hoarse voice. He knew Mill was apprehensive about putting him through a repeat of the previous night, but they had to keep going.

The agent nodded in consent. "Okay, let's go."

Noin's team went with them that time. Duo could tell his boss was nervous about being in the field with the agent he had secretly loved for years, but he couldn't worry about Mill's feelings in the moment, he already felt like he was stretched too far; spread too thin.

Sitting in the backseat of the SUV again, he adjusted his vest and touched his gun to make him feel more secure. During the two hour drive to the remote mansion in the mountains, Duo remembered, involuntarily, the first night he had met up with Heero at the Sunburst French Creek motel.

As soon as he stepped through the door of room 102 he was all over Heero and the shorter man eagerly returned his heated kisses. His hands wandered with definite desperation. He had been thinking about this hook-up all day, remembering the brief taste he had gotten when he appeared on Heero's doorstep just the previous week. His hands kneaded the flesh through obstructing clothes and with a growl he pushed the hem of the thin grey shirt that Heero wore up his torso, all the way up to his armpits and he stroked his coarse knuckles down his exposed sighs, feeling the suggestions of ribs and tense muscles underneath the silken skin.

Their hips were fused together. He could feel the heat of Heero's erection pressed between them as vice versa was true for the other. Duo maneuvered Heero around and pushed him back against the door. He stepped back only long enough to rid them both of their shirts and to appraise him lustfully for a second before pressing their bodies together again. Duo felt the hardness of Heero's stiff nipples against his chest and the tickle of the other's bangs as they merged with his.

The whole experience was very intense. He had been abstinent since he went into rehab and all the bottled-up sexual energy released at once in an explosion that set his every nerve-ending alight and it felt like an orgasm in and of itself, but instead of leaving him satisfied, it left him hungry for the taste of that golden skin.

He kissed the sensitive shell of the ear, the long neck and the shoulder while his fingers figured out where Heero liked to be touched most.

Heero's words were jarring in the heat of the moment. "Isn't this the motel where those four guys were killed?"

"Three," He corrected. "Only three of them died."

"Right. Wasn't the other guy paralyzed though?"

"Something like that." With a frown he stopped his assault and peered into Heero's eyes.

"Isn't this place a little… creepy?"

Duo grinned and recaptured his mouth in another kiss and when their lips parted and Heero looked at him, dizzy and dazed, Duo assured him: "I promise I'll protect you." He took Heero's hand and guided it to the handgun in the holster on his hip.

Heero bit his bottom lip and his erection firmed even more.

Duo took the gun out and let Heero feel the weight of it in his hands. "I'll keep you safe."

The younger man was clearly impressed and turned on. He inspected the handgun curiously and Duo marveled at those long, golden fingers exploring the cold, black shape of the weapon.

The agent took the gun and placed it on the desk next to them, then he cupped the beautiful face in his big hands and kissed him again.

With his concerns about the safety of the motel seemingly forgotten Heero was easily persuaded to join Duo on the bed. Heero wasn't easily frightened anyway, he had a painful past of his own that, at the very least, had done him the kindness of equipping him with tools to deal with any hardship the future would throw at him.

Heero's body yielded like water to his every touch and surged around him and made him feel weightless. He demanded nothing but gave everything, letting Duo kiss him where-ever he pleased and uncertain hands returned the sensual touches.

Not able to stand the tease any longer, Duo sat up and unfastened his pants and let the weight of his belt drag the fabric down his thighs. He stroked himself through his underwear, the thick shaft curving up to his left hipbone. Heero reached out and replaced his hand with his own. In the meantime Duo fought with the buttons of the fly of Heero's jeans and once he popped the last one he moved off the bed to strip the denim and the cotton-blend of his briefs down the length of his legs and stepped out of his own slacks and underwear. He retrieved the condoms and lube from his pocket and threw them onto the bed before climbing on top of the Japanese man.

Heero spread his legs without hesitation and wrapped them around Duo's hips.

"I want you on all fours," Duo said. It was easier for him to keep sex impersonal if there would be no eye-contact.

Heero didn't allow him to pry his legs away and flip him over. "No, like this," He pleaded with vulnerable voice.

He didn't want a discussion to get in the way of what he needed, so Duo didn't argue. Without much ado he put on the condom and smeared an excessive amount of lube onto himself. As he positioned the head of his erection at the opening, Heero stiffened and he said:

"It's been a while."

Duo had figured as much. He tried not to embarrass him when he asked clinically: "Do you need me to prep you?"

He shook his head. "Just go slow."

Slow wasn't really his speed and the last thing he wanted was for Heero to need him to stay still inside him for a minute. He had past experience with lovers having trouble adjusting to his size and he had discovered that being inside someone and not moving, merely holding them and kissing them until they relaxed, was far too intimate. He decided he had to avoid it. He poured more lubricant into his hand. He rubbed two hands together to warm up the liquid and then he made sure his fingers were slick enough.

Heero didn't say anything as he slid his index finger into him and only let out a slight gasp as he added another finger after a while, and another and another, to properly stretch and prepare him. His expression was one of focus, until Duo bundled his fingers together and deliberately started to massage his prostate. Soon, the younger man was covered in an sheen of sweat that gave his golden skin an attractive glow and he was moaning freely. He had his head tossed back and his dark hair fanned out on the white sheets. The spread thighs were tense and the muscles quivered. His erection twitched and pre-cum beaded on the red crown.

Judging him to be ready, Duo retreated his fingers and got into position again. Because he had stretched Heero with as many as four fingers, he was able to thrust into him without much resistance.

Heero let out a long, deep moan and curled his spine to look down his body at where they were joined. "Ahh, you're big."

Duo didn't say anything and ignored the swell of his own ego. He hooked his hands in the hollow of Heero's knees and pushed them back against his chest to gain the best access and he started rocking into him. Heero allowed himself to be overpowered by Duo and overcome with pleasure. He was loud, just the way Duo liked it.

The Japanese male grabbed the end of his braid and held onto it in a tight fist as the pleasure built towards a climax at an unforgiving pace. He tugged on his braid and pulled his face down to connect their mouths in a passionate kiss.

Duo preferred not to kiss during sex – and that was never an issue because he hardly ever did it facing his partner – but in the moment he couldn't deny the other anything and he greedily engaged his tongue in battle.

He shouted his lover's name when he reached his climax, a first for him. Once he pumped the last of his semen into the condom he pulled out, got rid of the latex and unceremoniously took Heero's neglected arousal into his mouth. When he could tell the man was close, he finished him off with his hand, angling his penis up to his belly button so he would spill his white hot passion onto his own stomach.

"That was very good," The agent said with a grin.

"Yeah?" Heero smiled sloppily and agreed: "Yeah."

"Mind if I take a shower before I go?"

"Mind? Go?" Heero repeated quizzically.

He realized Heero had expected him to stay and spend the night with him. He should have been more clear, but it was an uncomfortable conversation that he preferred to avoid for as long as he could.

Heero propped himself up on his elbows and stared at him and for a moment Duo lost his intentions to leave in the depths of those breathtaking eyes. But he shook his head and remembered he couldn't afford to fall in love and he had a feeling Heero was the kind of guy who could make him fall and make him fall hard if he was giving enough time; if he stared into those eyes long enough, if he kissed those lips often enough, if he held him to him for even a single night. Duo had himself convinced that that would be the real act of cruelty, to let them both fall in love but never let the relationship out in the open, so it was better to strictly limit their interactions to sex, in that seedy motel room.

He kissed him for the last time that night. The electricity that sparked was brushed off as post-orgasm bliss. Duo took a quick shower and then left with a pathetic 'Catch ya later' and a halfhearted wave.

He thought his careful steps to prevent himself from falling in love – which amounted to him being a total asshole to Heero – had at least been successful, but the detail in which he could remember that encounter and every encounter after suggested otherwise. His hairs still stood on end whenever he remembered any kiss, any touch, any thrust. And when he did, every part of his body tingled in anticipation to do it all over again; to immerse himself in the refreshing cool of those blue eyes and bury himself into the soothing warmth of that body. Yet what he wanted most of all, was just to have Heero smile at him again, that endearing grin that bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes. It was a yearning that went beyond lust and undeniably begged for that other 'L-word' to be spoken out loud, even if only in a whisper.

That very first time, he promised he would protect him. He had to honor that promise. He had let Heero down in so many other regards, he couldn't let him down again.

"Duo, we're here."

Duo gave Milliardo a nod and the men climbed out of the car and with the assistance of Noin's team they headed up the driveway. The mansion appeared between the trees, a building of sharp angles and vast expanses of glass and concrete. They split up into pairs to cover all the exits and synchronized their entries, opting for the soft approach where they picked the locks and snuck inside.

For a few seconds all Duo could hear was their boots crunching and shuffling on the bare concrete floor, until suddenly he heard a voice bellow, and they all froze.

"You fucking cunt!"

He winced at the sound of a dull thud and a painful cry but then his heart swelled. Heero was still alive. He was in pain, but alive!

All teams rushed to the source of the sounds, coming from behind a door that seemed to lead down into a basement. Milliardo made sure that Duo stayed at the back of the pack. He quietly tried the doorknob only to find it locked and he had them all step aside to make room for WuFei, the master at kicking-in doors.

"Quit your mewling, you disgusting piece of shit!"

Duo's blood boiled. He gripped the handle of his gun tightly in his sweaty palms.

"Fuck. What is taking so long?" Luiz wondered angrily. "Dermail should have called by now. Your boyfriend is being hauled off to prison as we speak." He cackled. "I'm going to enjoy killing you. I'm going to cut you open…" Heero cried out. "… right here. And you can watch your own guts spill to the floor."

"Fuck you…" Heero growled.

Milliardo held up his hand and counted down.

3…

2…

1…

With a mighty kick the Chinese agent made short work of the door and Milliardo and Trowa rushed in first, screaming: "Police! Drop your weapon! Show your hands!" Noin and WuFei followed them down a narrow flight of stairs, their guns trained. The four of them stopped at the bottom of the staircase, all aiming their weapons in the same direction, but they were frozen in place.

Duo knew Milliardo would have preferred it he stayed away until they would resolve the stand-off, but he couldn't stand by at the top of the staircase, not knowing what was going on, not knowing if Heero was alright. With light footfalls he made his way halfway down the steps until the entire basement came into view.

At the center of the hollow, concrete box, were Heero and Luiz and Duo felt like breaking down at the sight of his lover but he forced himself to remain composed.

Heero's wrists were tied with silver duct tape and held up high above his head by a metal hook coming down from the ceiling. He was still wearing the clothes from that night; his black boxer briefs and his white shirt, but the shirt was stained with dirt and blood. He was blindfolded by a strip of black cloth. Trails of dried blood came down from his nose that stained his lips and smeared red all the way down his throat to the first button of his shirt. The young man was visibly trembling.

Luiz looked beat-up himself. He had a thick lip and a bruised and swollen shut eye.

Duo wanted to say something to make Heero feel at ease, but he didn't want to risk him moving in reaction to whatever words of comfort he might have to offer.

Luiz stood right in front of Heero, with one of his big arms wrapped around his slim waste. The man held up a long, gleaming hunting knife and he had the tip of it right against the blindfold, by Heero's left eye. He glared at the officers that had him in their sights. "I'll kill him! I'll stab him right through his fucking eye and scramble his brain."

"Put the knife down, Luiz," Milliardo ordered. "Or you'll get a double tap in the heart from every single one of us before the blade has even pierced the fabric. That's eight rounds of lead in the heart, you don't want that."

"I'm not aiming for the heart," Noin said darkly. "I'm aiming for your dick. You definitely don't want that."

Mill also wasn't counting all the bullets in Duo's clip which he would pump into Luiz' gut if he caused Heero any further harm.

"I want immunity!" The criminal demanded and paused to chew his nicotine gum. "I know things!"

"You're not in a position to negotiate, Luiz. You kidnapped and tortured a man for sixty hours."

"Tortured? This disobedient cunt asked for a beating! He killed my friend and look at what he did to my face!"

Duo grinned.

"Still, it doesn't look like you've been taking care of him, Luiz," Milliardo pointed out.

Heero was badly beaten and dehydrated. He barely had the strength to remain standing. The basement was hot and stuffy too, the air was stifling, Heero was soaked in his own sweat and could be suffering from a serious heatstroke. Duo's rage was further fueled by the sight of cigarette burns on his exposed legs.

The agent continued: "Looking at him, I don't really feel like going easy on you."

"I can give you Dermail! And that blonde bitch, Cat. And many more like them!"

"Fine. That's cool. Drop the knife to the floor and let us take you to the station. I'm sure the DA will offer you a pretty sweet deal."

Luiz was looking at jail time no matter who he was willing to rat out, but he could seriously reduce his sentence if he cooperated.

Luiz stared at them all for a moment as he contemplated his options. Realizing that if he wanted to live, he had no choice but to surrender. He slowly took the knife away from Heero's face. He dropped it and kicked it across the room.

"Get down on the floor and put your hands on your head!" Noin shouted and she moved in as Luiz obeyed her instructions. She lowered herself down on top of him, purposefully digging her knee into his back as she roughly put the cuffs on him.

Duo had expected he would want to pull Luiz away from her and kick the shit out of him and make him feel a kind of pain they didn't even know about in the Federal prison he was going for the next couple of years, but instead he forgot all about the man – the poor excuse of a man.

He rushed down the stairs and Trowa, WuFei and Milliardo made way for him. He literally stepped over Luiz' prone body to get to Heero.

"Heero?" His voice cracked. "Baby?"

"Duo?" His face contorted and he started to cry.

"Shhh… Shhh…" He reached up and undid the knot of the blindfold and carefully peeled the soiled fabric away from his face.

Heero's eyes blinked open and for a moment he smiled when he recognized the familiar face but then he broke down in sobs and lowered his head.

Duo put his hands on the slim waist and lifted him up just enough to get his hands free from the hook and Heero dropped his arms around Duo's shoulders. The younger man smelled of sweat and urine, having not been allowed to relieve himself in a bathroom since he was taken – but Duo didn't care about that. He hugged the shaking body to his tightly only to realize he had been the one who was shaking.

The Japanese male pressed his face against Duo's chest. "You left. You left!"

Duo cried freely. "I know," He wept miserably. "I'm so sorry. I'm never going to leave you again," He vowed. He cradled Heero's face in his hands and made him look up at him. With a breaking heart he studied the pained expression in his beautiful eyes and the blood on his handsome face. He leaned in and placed a kiss on his lips, even though they were dry and cracked and had clotted blood on them.

"I love you," He said, realizing the overwhelming, overpowering truth of his words. He was not going to make the same mistakes again and deny them both the truth they needed to be outspoken.

Those lips formed a smile again and even though the bottom lip was trembling, the smile didn't fade away that time.

After allowing them their moment, Milliardo interrupted: "EMT's are on their way. Let's get him out of this sauna."

"Yeah." Duo wasted no time and lifted him up in his arms and carried him outside.

Even as Heero breathed in the fresh mountain air, he was still panting and sweating. He looked too pale and sickly.

Duo gently placed him on the steps of the front door. He cut the duct tape and carefully peeled it off his skin. WuFei came up to them and helpfully gave Heero a bottle of water that he had quickly fetched from the car and placed towels and more water at Duo's feet. Heero barely had the strength to hold the bottle to his lips. When he ended up spilling more water than drinking it, Duo took the bottle from him, ignoring his glare and with a hand on the back of his neck he tilted Heero's head back and helped him drink. When he had had as much as he could handle, the American let him catch his breath and he soaked one of the towels with water from the bottle and wiped his face and neck clean of blood as best he could and then he told Heero to lay down on his back and he drenched a clean towel in water and dapped his forehead and chest to cool him down.

His breaths came out in miserable wheezes and yet he smiled when Duo leaned in and kissed his cheek.

Wrought with emotion Duo failed to stifle a sob. He stroked his hand through Heero's damp hair. "Will you be okay?" He choked. His complexion was so void of color it worried Duo.

"Yeah… I will now… Now that you're here…" Heero breathed.

An ambulance came rushing up the driveway and Duo made room for the EMT's so they could work, but he kept a tight hold in Heero's hand. They opened up his shirt, revealing hideous bruises that were a telltale mark of cracked ribs and there was a long, fresh, but thankfully superficial cut across his lower abdomen, where Luiz must have shown him how he would gut him.

Noin and her team left to escort Luiz back to the station. She briefly touched Duo's shoulder and offered him a smile and Duo watched her have a quiet conversation with Milliardo before climbing behind the wheel of their SUV. Luiz was in the back, sandwiched between two of her agents. He noticed Milliardo's embarrassed smile.

Once the paramedics had checked Heero's vitals and had put an oxygen mask on him, the they transferred him onto the gurney and Duo followed closely behind. He got an odd look when he was about to climb into the back of the ambulance, normally agents didn't accompany victims to the hospital.

"I'm coming with you," Duo stated, leaving no room for argument. "He's my boyfriend."

The two men simply nodded and made room for him. One of them asked him to pull the doors shut and he was about to do that when Milliardo appeared.

"Noin said we should go on a double date as soon as Heero feels better."

Duo smiled and simply nodded and Milliardo shut the doors and banged on the back to let the driver know he was free to go. With a jolt the ambulance started moving and Duo scooted further to the front to sit closely next to Heero. "Is he going to be okay?"

One of the EMT's gave him a reassuring answer: "He'll be fine once we just get some fluids in him. I don't think he'll be at the hospital for more than a couple of days."

Duo nodded and exhaled in relief.

Heero mumbled something incoherent, so Duo leaned in close and helped him momentarily take off the oxygen mask so he could speak.

"I knew you would come for me."

"Yeah?"

"You promised you would protect me."

"I did. But I didn't do a very good job." He couldn't stop his gaze from traveling down Heero's abused body.

"You did. You kept your promise," Heero declared.

"I'll do a better job from now on. I'm not going to be a coward anymore, that I also promise you." He smiled at him and reached for the oxygen mask, but Heero stopped him.

"I got an extra dining room chair for you," He wheezed.

Duo chuckled and kissed him lightly before placing the mask back over his mouth. "Good," He said with a grin, "Because I'm coming home with you."


End file.
